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from the I-owe,-I-owe,-it's-off-to-work-I-go dept.
Another day, another record broken.
The debt held by US households has surpassed its pre-2008 record, several financial outlets note. A peculiar spotlight in the associated numbers falls on student loans, where delinquencies are multiple times higher than for other debt types: 10 percent is the norm.
That's some pretty troubling news for the economy [and wider society], notes Rana Foroohar at sister outlet the Financial Times. First off, there's the association between the rise in student debt, and a decrease in home ownership for young people. This connection is exacerbated by them millennials increasingly turning towards income-based repayment programmes, which spread out the debt over more years.
Secondly, the level of student debt delinquencies ain't changing: the 10 percent figure is a near-constant over the past 4-5 years. People who've ever had a delinquency -- even if they recover -- have a much lower rate of home ownership at age 30 as compared to their non-defaulted compatriots. Not having a home means not filling it with stuff, and filling with stuff is kinda what the economy is based on.
Then, thirdly, it's not only students that are hit by student debt: increasingly, their parents are taking on debt too, to help out. Fuel for that debt sandwich is something peculiar: the rate of inflation in college admission costs is three times higher than the consumer price index. Must be that college professors wages have increased a lot, then.
Given that boomers and their millennial offspring are the two largest voting blocks in the US, a snappy future president-elect might consider raising the issue a bit.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @03:57AM (11 children)
Does the time you need to spend to keep this scheme running equals a worthwhile hourly pay? Does the diverted attention steal that away from something that could have benefited you even more?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @01:34PM (3 children)
See where I wrote another reply above that says how simple this is. We don't spend any significant time doing this. Utilities are all on auto-pay on the airline card. When buying food / fuel, we use a certain card by reflex. Anything else, we use the other card.
Then there is the going online to pay the cards at the end of each week. We don't want that money sitting in checking account looking like it is "unspent". (We could have a separate account, or do more bookkeeping, etc to keep the money in our hands until the last possible moment, but again, we're trying to not spend time on this.)
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @01:50PM (2 children)
Btw.. is it possible to pay money to another credit card such that you can re-circulate plenty of money and be a "good spender" but in reality not using a dime? ;)
Setup0)
Card0 pays to Card1
Withdraw as cash.
Setup1)
Card0 pays Card1 pays Card2 pays Card0 etc..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @01:58PM (1 child)
No. It is not possible. Sadly.
There is only one exception that I knew of, and I think it was closed off. One time, we bought a big stack of Disney Gift Cards on Target card, for 5% off face value. Then we went online to target.com to pay off the Target card, and were able to use another CC to pay it. Now that got us rewards on that other CC.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @02:37PM
Start a shell company?
That has a credit card linked to it..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @02:15PM (6 children)
Now that you mentioned the time I spend (or lack of it actually), it reminded me. There is another CC we have that we don't even give a thought to. (At least I don't) My wife pays the bill regularly, but that is all done online and is a minor chore that she does. (I did mention we are single income.)
Amazon credit card. The only reason we got this one is because Amazon gives you 3% in Amazon credit for all Amazon purchases. So we got that card. It is set up as the only payment method on Amazon. We buy enough stuff on Amazon to be worth it. We 3% back -- for doing nothing! Just spending according to our normal pattern. Right now we've got over $100 in Amazon rewards on this card that we could use any time. But we've built that up over the last year or longer.
Again, this is an example of earning money without doing any work -- other than paying the Amazon card bill like the other credit card bills -- online.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @02:39PM (5 children)
I would say you spend less (ie 3%) but doesn't get any net income from it. The real way to "save" anything is to not buy ;)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @03:15PM (4 children)
Even if we spend less, we still would get 3% or 0% on that lesser amount depending on whether or not we used an Amazon card to pay for it. We're not spending any differently on Amazon today than before we got that card. Like the subject line says, we are using the CC as a tool. We would end up having to pay Amazon on some credit card. Or debit card. Why not use a card that gives us 3%, which is higher than our other reward options for paying Amazon purchases.
We already are careful about what we spend. We don't make impulse buys. I might think about it for days or weeks before I spend on something out of the ordinary like a Roku.
Sometimes a sale can cause us to suddenly buy, if it is something we are already considering. Last fall we were talking about getting a new TV for weeks. We had the money. We had a reason to buy. Obviously, at this point we had held off on buying. When there was a sale, we looked at the options, talked about it some more. And made a decision to buy. Very deliberate choice. Naturally we bought it on the CC that would give us the best reward, and paid that CC bill within a few days. Then come late October, that helped us on our vacation. :-)
That reminds me of an old Ferengi proverb.
You should pay attention to the important things in life.
Because sooner or later, they will go on sale.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @04:31PM (3 children)
Did the TV work well with the computer? in these times of incompatible protocols, HDCP (DRM), spy-r'-us etc.
I guess the remote control thing hasn't been resolved yet.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @06:13PM (2 children)
The TV was for the living room. It has a smart TV built in, sadly, which I do not use or ever want to use.
I use a Roku 3 on that TV as well as a DVD player (not Blue Ray) and a Chrome Cast.
The Roku will easily play video from a server on the local network. But not the audio on most. I can understand Roku not wanting to license that audio codec. The irony is that the Roku will play mp3 audio just fine. Even before the mp3 patent expired.
I'm going to re-rip some of our DVDs but with audio being mp3 this time. Other video files can be easily processed with ffmpeg so that the video codec is "copy" and the audio is re-encoded to mp3.
I'm not sure what remote control thing you are referring to. The TV has a remote. It a lot of configuration, menus, etc. Configuration of the WiFi (no way!), etc. But I only use four buttons of that remote's many buttons: Power, Input, Vol+, Vol-.
No cable. I have tried an antenna, but don't really care for it, and nothing over the air is worth watching on network TV, other than PBS. But PBS is a nice app on the Roku.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @07:20PM (1 child)
Maybe you can start a small project to reflash the smart TV into BSD or Linux?
For the audio isn't there like raw PCM or a FLAC option?
My remote control idea was to be able to control the TV from a computer such that one playing one source the TV can be told to switch to that etc. And doing it using Ethernet or so instead of placing a IR emitter wired to some microcontroller near the TV-set.
I'll agree on shit-on-tv.. ;-)
Good as computer output unit. Worthless as a receiver of big corp trash.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @07:36PM
So many project ideas. So little time. I don't know anything about BSD. Other than some dabbling with Raspberry Pi and Arduino, I generally prefer to work at much higher levels of abstraction these days. Back in the 80's I would have been more interested in a project at this low a level. These days I think of C or C++ as very low level -- close to the machine. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I'm talking about the audio being AAC in DVD's I ripped in the past. I wish I had used mp3 as the audio format in the ripped video file that sits on my server.
The remote I mostly use is the Roku remote. Or the DVD remote. Recently I started watching Babylon 5 on DVD again. Just about done with season 2. But I've got Netflix, Hulu (no commercials), HBO, Starz, Amazon Prime, PBS (free), and Sling. Not sure if I like the Sling content, may not keep it.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.