Hard News: Deadly Exuberance
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Hey, I got an ANZ Qantas Platinum card a couple of years ago. While a full-time student. With no job. The delicious irony was that I'd applied for the predecessor Gold card when I did have a job, and got declined. Twice.
Ah, but with a job, you'd probably be paying off the balance in full every month or something devious like that, which the card companies won't stand for. As a student, you're much more likely to accrue lots of lovely interest.
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I fondly recall the year we arrived in Dunedin and discovered house prices were so low we could buy a house* on my man's US Gold Master Card. A card he had from the days of being a well paid computer programmer, and it had NO fees. Of course when it came to getting a mortgage (SBS's interest rates were better than Master Card offered) that same credit was counted against us. So we cancelled the card.
Every few months westpac offers us a gold visa, I check out the fees and discover that we would have to pay double the fees for gold and I really can't work out what we'd get in return.
* Admitedly a small house in Cockerell street
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The birds feasting on my strawberry patch just as they turn ripe are evidence of this.
A bit over a year ago during drought time I was ranting to all who would listen and some who wouldn't about bloody rabbits eating my tomatoes. I kept finding them half chewed out. One day I stepped into the middle of the patch and got a hell of a fright as a couple of starlings flew out from under my feet.
Damn things had been feeding off my tomatoes. I figured that it was an easy wet feed for them given the drought conditions at the time.
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Every few months westpac offers us a gold visa, I check out the fees and discover that we would have to pay double the fees for gold and I really can't work out what we'd get in return.
For us it's the free travel insurance. I go back to Italy a lot and it saves me a small fortune.
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The Macys parade in NYC got Rick Rolled by the real Rick Astley
!!! That's brilliant...
Re prioritising long-term investment, there are some real downsides there in terms of flexibility of the investment economy etc. What we need to do is remove existing unecessary distortions in tax around property etc.
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Ah, but with a job, you'd probably be paying off the balance in full every month or something devious like that, which the card companies won't stand for. As a student, you're much more likely to accrue lots of lovely interest.
I got offered it because, although a student, I was paying the balance off every month. Living within one's means is a wonderful thing. They didn't know I was a student, they just knew that I paid my card off every month and had an adequate credit limit. I doubt it'd happen these days, what with credit being tight, but it'll probably become possible again in a few years. But it won't be happening to me :P
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The flavour of freshly picked tomatoes tends to be better than that of those bought from shops
And that goes double for strawberries.
And for blueberries - though I can't vouch for them personally. They grew in beautifully last year and the local tuis and blackbirds seemed to enjoy them a lot.
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* Admitedly a small house in Cockerell street
And thus, Google Street View becomes an indispensable storytelling tool ...
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Lowering interest rates will have the same effect as a dose of smack would have to someone who's already overdosing on the stuff.
Isn't it more like getting the overdosing smack addict to do multiple lines of coke to wake him up -- and then finding yourself with a dude with cocaine psychosis?
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always go MasterCard
Do explain..
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Recently I was at the post office and checked my PO box, where I found a letter from my bank telling me that they'd pre-approved me for an increased credit card limit.
Hilariously, I was at the post office that day because I was there to open a Kiwibank account, which I did, including a credit card with my old limit.
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What you can do, if a bit strapped for cash and needing more credit, is to ensure you max out the limit each month (groceries, work expenses, buying stuff for friends in return for cash, etc). Then put your salary cheque, overdraft and cash advances on other cards into paying it off in full. With three or more cards, you can keep this rolling quite easily.
The banks then see you as a high-spending good risk who always pays in full and up the amount.
Also, make a few mistakes when applying. Where they ask whether you own, rent, etc, tick "own" on the grounds that your parents own the house you live in. Use the parents address in a leafy suburb, not your own in the ghetto. When asked how long you've been working, take that to mean all jobs, not the current one.
If everyone did this, the banks would go bust due to lending money to dodgy credit risks. Oh, wait...
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The birds feasting on my strawberry patch just as they turn ripe are evidence of this.
Clearly, you need some cats to keep the birds under control (and as a bonus, they don't like strawberries).
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Note: it's quite OK to bell the cat, after all the idea is to scare the birds away - we do, because of all the native birds where we live, last thing I want is her dragging in a kereru twice her size ....
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In response to the OP, something defintiely doesn't add up.
Using credit we could not afford, the world engaged in levels of consumption it now can't sustain......and the answer is MORE credit we (still) can't afford?
Meanwhile, savers are seeing their returns evarporate as the debt addicts driving the central banks encourage ever more borrowing (backed by the taxpayer!) at interest rates lower than seen for years.
This will either fix everything (can't see how with no savings) or it will move us all to the next bubble which will pop either in a welter of hyper-inflation or implode in a blizzard of defaults......by governments.
Or maybe both as everyone, everywhere prints money to prevent the defaults.
Whatever.....none of this is adding up.
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Steve, I'm sure it adds up just fine if you are one of the big business beneficiaries of the bailout.
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Isn't it more like getting the overdosing smack addict to do multiple lines of coke to wake him up -- and then finding yourself with a dude with cocaine psychosis?
Will certainly end up homeless.
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Niall Ferguson's Vanity Fair story on the history of the credit explosion is a top read.
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The only thing stopping me from swapping my ANZ visa ($20 a year in fees) for a Kiwibank credit card ($0 a year in fees, but you have to use it lots) is the fact that I can remember the number on my visa card, making online purchasing that much faster and easier.
The weird thing was I transposed a couple of numbers once by accident, on a large travel purchase, and it still went through. The bank person was very quiet about how that all happened when I conscientiously rang up to find out why I hadn't been billed for several hundred Euro. Someone mustn't check their statements regularly.
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And for blueberries - though I can't vouch for them personally. They grew in beautifully last year and the local tuis and blackbirds seemed to enjoy them a lot.
As did my Jack Russell Alice, who used to (may she rest in peace) delicately prize each ripe berry off with her lips without damaging the plant in any way. The birds didn't get a look in.....
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OTOH, as a homeowner who will actually have to borrow money to extend the house soon, I'm starting to feel guilty about the windfall ...
Nah... get over it, because I don't grudge you and Fi whatever break you get. But one meta-bitch I've had about reporting of the economy is that there tends to be an echo chamber effect where everything gets viewed through the filter of middle-class, home-owning white collar Boomers with reasonably clean credit records -- which is fair enough, as far as it goes. But very far from the whole picture.
(I can't loan-shark my brother!)
Sure you can, Matthew. Just tell your brother it's a learning experience, and he should be thankful you don't wound or mutilate defaulters. :)
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But one meta-bitch I've had about reporting of the economy is that there tends to be an echo chamber effect where everything gets viewed through the filter of middle-class, home-owning white collar Boomers with reasonably clean credit records -- which is fair enough, as far as it goes. But very far from the whole picture.
Somewhere in Wellington, Joanne Black just felt a disturbance in the Force.
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I don't fully buy that savers are losing out in any way at the moment. Savings have been the best class of investment for a good 6 months. If any time were proof of the value of savings, it is now. Interest rates dropping doesn't help them, sure, but at least their investments are still growing. Most other types have been contracting. So they are 'outperforming the market' hugely.
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"I don't fully buy that savers are losing out in any way at the moment. Savings have been the best class of investment for a good 6 months. If any time were proof of the value of savings, it is now. Interest rates dropping doesn't help them, sure, but at least their investments are still growing. Most other types have been contracting. So they are 'outperforming the market' hugely."
I agree that savers are winners to the extent that they are not leveraged on non-performing assets (which means pretty much everything right now except for precious metals).
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Sure you can, Matthew. Just tell your brother it's a learning experience, and he should be thankful you don't wound or mutilate defaulters. :)
But where's the fun in that?
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