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Living within your means ?


observer

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Should home or personal economics have a place in the school curriculum ?    Reports now suggest that 18yo's are being bombarded with credit card offers which they seem incapable of resisting, on the basis that they "want it and want it now",  and only when they're hit by the interest charges do they realise the true cost of being spendoholics.   Ironically, most of these snowflakes will be voting for a political Party with a similar attitude to debt, who will promise the Earth now, only to reap the consequences later; and when the people finally turf them out, they'll leave yet another note at the Treasury - "sorry, there's no money left".              :ph34r:

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Credit card and loan companies always prey on those who have little money or are already in debt Obs so it doesn't surprise me that they target youngsters. 

In answer to your question though about home and personal economics having a place as part of the school curriculum then I say YES it should and I thought it already did.

A few months ago I was shredding 3 years of my sons old college work.. at his request....imagine how long that took with a shredder that only works for 3 minutes at a time before power down time :blink:

Having time to read through various aspect of his course work and gaining a greater understanding of all things 'electrical' while I waited for said shredder to cool down (well ok so I didn't really understand most of it..way too complicated :shock: but why do I need to know cos I've got him who is qualified :wink: )....I was actually happy to see that part of the more 'general' aspects of the course work in the early days covered managing money and the pit falls of credit cards, debt and the likes and how to balance money vs life and to get help if needed. 

It was actually very informative could be why he never went down the route of applying for a credit card back then or spending beyond his means.  He has one now but that's only because paying off the credit card amount each month appears to boost your credit rating should you ever want to get a mortage or owt EEK !!!!.
 

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I got my flexible friend over 30 years ago. I was made redundant in the 80s & decided to have a go on my own with the enterprise allowance scheme that was on offer from the government. I needed a vehicle which i bought out of my redundancy money & managed to get work after a slow start but the real killer was waiting to get paid off firms i was dealing with. I was in a cash flow crisis, struggling to buy fuel for the vehicle ,& in the paper that day was an advert for a credit card....just fill in the application & send it off ....within 5 days the card arrived & i was up & running again. Guess what ,within a month i was at my credit limit & behold a letter through the post told me that my credit limit had been doubled  so another crisis was averted. That card really saved me at the time & within a few days i started getting payments from clients which then became a regular monthly income & i was able to keep on top of the card which from then i used just for fuel.  The gist is that credit is good just as long as it doesn't become debt. I still have a card today & whatever i spend is paid off the following month keeping Mr Micawber happy.

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I think it's a bit unfair to critisize the younger generation this way, after all, it's oldies like us that are pushing the credit.
 
Easy for us to say we managed to live without credit cards or sleep at night without worrying about credit scores but
we're never going to return to the old fashioned HP agreement or bank loan. You'll remember back then, obtaining credit usually involved some degree of face to face discussion with timley checks re your ability to repay but now it takes seconds and no need to speak with anyone!
 
Bill :)
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