I am not giving the banks a pass, and I am not saying that banks are moral. All I am simply saying is that if it is common knowledge that banks are trying to take advantage of you, why do business with them? I am not advocating for the banks or for huge coporations. I disagree with the way that they treat their customers and even more so with the way they treat their employees. I try to promote small business whenever I can. I am also not try to outsmart anyone. All I am doing is avoiding business transactions where I know I will get the short end of the stick. I am simply saying that there is another way.

I done keep all my gosh-durn money tucked away inside mah beat up ol' mattress, right next to me boomstick, yes siree! That way the bank, they can't take it all and give it to all dem illuminati movie stars what run the system. I also write checks at the register when I buy all my dang-ol' groceries here in good ol' 2012.


...sorry, just trying to insert some humor. Having to deal with sharks is a reality that almost everyone has to face at some point or another. They play their dirty game, and the only way to win is not to play, but most people can't get on without having to deal with some nasty legalese or another, be it the banks or some other crookery.

Ha ha! Sometimes I am tempted to live that way:) But I do realize that we live in a real world and I do know that my mindset is not typical to put it mildly. When I was younger I got into my fair share of trouble with a credit card. I was young and stupid and spent money that I didn't have. It killed my credit score and only now at 10 years later am I finally starting to get things back on track. I just see so many people continually making the same mistakes that I did and digging themselves deeper and deeper in debt. And yes, the banks and credit card companies are taking advantage of it. But look at how hard people fight to get a credit card. Banks have sold their product so well that people will pay a yearly fee on many credit cards just to carry the stupid thing in their wallet, let alone pay interest on their purchases. Why do people clamour for this? I have a friend that has been screwed over by the same credit card company time and again. On multiple occasions he has posted a payment over the phone, and then the company will seemingly refuse the payment so that they can charge him late fees and more interest. Yes this practice is immoral and despicable, but my friend still does business with this company. WHY?

I've been fortunate enough to have never had to spend a dime that I didn't actually own. It shouldn't surprise you that I've never driven a car before. Shit happens though, and sometimes you don't have a choice, but living far below your means certainly helps.

Of course, once you're already down shit creek without a paddle, a lot of good any of that does. Some people are prone to making stupid mistakes, and some others take advantage of these mistakes. If we all decided to be super-frugal, well, I'm not sure our economic model was designed with that in mind. Our world isn't a peaceful utopia. Being a dick to others pays well, and being nice, good, and living healthy are expensive luxuries.

The major problem with all of this is that we aren't all mentally wired the same way. Some people can have a passion for business. Others could never hope to have a grasp of economics, no matter how much time and effort they put towards it. Plenty of people, they don't just make stupid mistakes, but they're actually incapable of learning any better. Their reading comprehension may be poor, they might be slow with numbers, organization doesn't come easily to them at all, they can't focus very well at all, their memory might be very poor, or they might be simple and unable to cope with more than what they're good at.

People like to point fingers at the victims and say that they should stop being stupid, but some people honestly can't hope to get any "smarter". Some people are just plain simple. Not necessarily braindead, and certainly not necessarily drug-addled, but not competent enough to manage their own money or sign their own papers.

Some people get stuck in their own habits. You can tell them over and over not to buy this or that, or that making the minimum payments will destroy them, but you'll never get through to them. They might need help, or they might very well just be doomed to this sort of recklessness.

I don't have any sort of solution to this, mind you. I'm just telling it like it is.

Giving them free money probably isn't the solution. Chastising business types for immoral behavior doesn't accomplish much, either. If somebody can be taken advantage of, somebody out there will always be more than willing to do it. I'm just saying that the victims aren't entirely at fault. They might have difficulties bettering themselves, or they don't know any better. Debt, poverty, and a lack of proper education may be all that they were ever raised to know, and it isn't at all easy to escape that sort of lifestyle. Especially when there are exponentially more associations far more inclined to allow them to drown in minimum payment hell than help them learn to survive economically.

<sigh> About the best solution I know of, and it ain't perfect, is to try to get involved to help those people directly, using one's knowledge to assist them in learning about this stuff and making the sensible decisions.

The sigh comes from doing this crap for my dad, and he's maybe a poster-child of what you describe: not dumb at all, but certainly not taking a look at the big picture, not thinking about the future, and never being satisfied with the limitations of the fixed-income lifestyle that he put himself into.

Found out last June that he had been bouncing checks for at least each of the previous 6 months, racking-up those fees along the way and perpetuating the problem. Noticed this when I picked up his mail for him and saw an envelope that looked suspiciously like an overdraft notice. Since we have power of attorney for him, I opened it up and took a look. Yep, overdraft. I went to his bank and got his statements going back to December; even more overdrafts. Great. Sat down and did some math and figured out what was going on. I also noted that he had just traded his almost-paid-for minivan for a pickup truck that he overpaid by, quite literally, 40%. Those payments hadn't even started yet and if he was bouncing checks before, there was no way in hell he was going to fix the problem by having another $90 tacked on to his car payment.

So my brother and I had a sit-down with him and went step-by-step through his "budget". We flat-out told him that he was already running thin and that the truck was going to do him in, financially. But I'm not going to let him default on that loan. He screwed this up, and he's going to make those payments, one way or another. Now, am I pissed at the bank for lending him the money? Damn straight, I am. We looked at the loan docs and saw something like 9.7% interest - awfully high when typical rates are bumping around 3% right now. "That's the best I could find. Three other banks wouldn't lend me the money." And that's not the smack upside the head that tells you buying this truck is a bad idea?!? Worse, it's a heap of crap that he won't get half the amount he paid for it should he decide to sell it. "You should have told us you were looking to replace the minivan."

Anyway, get involved if you know someone who suffers self-induced money problems. Granted, there's only so much one can do if the person is especially stubborn.

You could always join a credit union instead. Credit unions are owned by the members and democratically controlled by the members. They don't report to a bunch of outside shareholders. Their value and service is usually competitive with, if not better than the banks.

I have always used credit unions over banks and since Occupy Wall Street happened, I have convinced a number of other people to leave their banks for a local credit union instead.