Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Graham Stephan" channel.

@djangomarine6658 Nope, there was a time when that was the case. These days, how the people vote is largely irrelevant as there's often nobody worth supporting. Just look at the Presidential race, the election fraud that the DNC committed ensured that the people's will wasn't going to be the nominee, no matter how many people voted for a particular candidate. It was all about them putting their thumb on the scale to get somebody that the voters would approve of. The only factor that tracks with the results is the campaign donations. It doesn't matter that majorities of both parties support universal healthcare, we can't have it because the donors don't need it and aren't willing to give up the control they have.
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@rockyshocks101 It's not just about how likely you are to default, it's also their estimation of how much money they can extract from you.
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@PointsPointers When I first heard him talking about how CCs are evil, I didn't really get it. I pay my accounts off just about every month with the exception being when I get free promotional interest. Last money I switched to just debit and cash for most purchases and he was right. I'm not necessarily spending that much less than I was, but I'm finding it a lot easier to avoid buying things that I don't really need as it's a pain in the backside to figure out if I've got the money in the account necessary to pay via debit. IMHO, the best thing to do is to only put recurring payments on credit cards and do virtually everything else via cash or debit. The other things to put on credit is if you're getting a specific benefit out of it. For example, free insurance when you rent a car or free warranty protection. If you're counting on it for fraud protection, then you should be really thinking hard about whether the party you're paying can be trusted as you're not necessarily guaranteed for the CC company to believe your side over the merchant.
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@SouperMaruchan Credit cards are designed to encourage that. Why do you think so many of them give "points" now? If you use debit cards and cash you don't need to develop a ton of self control as the added work involved with figuring out if the charge will go through will discourage frivolous purchases.
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In line with this video, you aren't saving money by buying on sale unless you meet these 2 criteria. 1) you were going to buy it anyways and 2) you take the savings and put with the other money you've saved. That's not to say that it's wrong to take the money from the discount and spend it, just that you aren't saving money when you do that. It can be completely legitimate to take the price reduction and spend it.
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I wish the government would start appointing competent people to run their response to the economy. Short term deflation isn't an issue, it just encourages people to hold onto their money. The constant inflation is part of why so many Americans didn't have any savings coming into the pandemic. Year after year, the Federal Reserve was purposefully injecting money into the system to artificially guarantee that debt was cheaper to service. The problem with that is that for those that don't have the money to be properly invested, you're losing 2-3% to inflation, but being paid at most 2% interest, which means that most Americans were already seeing an effective negative return on their bank balances. Which when coupled with the failure of wages to keep up with inflation tended to make people poorer. This is even before you account for people making poor decisions about money or being tricked into paying outlandish fees.
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@Tonixxy You get it. Deflation for brief periods is part of a healthy economy. The alternative is having constant inflation where only those that can afford to invest in inflation resistant things like stocks can keep up. Bank interest that you get for savings accounts tends to top out at about 2% which means that you never get ahead, you're operating with negative interest. With negative interest, you would be losing even more money than you would right now by storing money in a regular savings account. For those with enough money to be prudently invested, it will make a difference, but for the poor, it likely won't as the poor are more likely to be without even a savings account anyways.
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TBH, it looks like this summer will be a great time to buy, assuming that the Federal Government continues to refuse to properly respond to the current crisis. There's likely to be a ton of foreclosures on top of people not buying property if they don't have a solid job locked in with enough pay to cover the expenses.
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You make this sound like it's somehow a bad thing. Considering how easy it is to get a credit card these days, if you're getting declined for a new one, they're doing you a favor. Most credit unions will give you a low limit card to start out with and increase the limit as you pay on time.
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This is bad advice. I've switched back to using just debit and cash for most things and it's a lot easier to avoid overspending if you don't use credit. What's more, those bonus points you get for using a credit card amount to basically nothing compared with the ease with which you can buy things you don't need or from people that aren't entirely trustworthy. I was personally skeptical of Dave Ramsey when it comes to not using cards even if you pay them off at the end of the month, but he wasn't wrong. They design those things to be addictive and the bank doesn't make any money at all unless you use them with most of the money being made via interest payments and various fees. If you're going to use credit cards, at least do yourself a favor and make them as annoying to get at as possible.
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The issue is that they make it far too easy to spend money. Most of the guarantees they offer are about making you feel more secure in spending the money. Personally, I think he goes a bit overboard on that front. I've switched to only using my credit cards for my utilities and select things where I have a specific reason for wanting CC protection. But in general, it's a lot easier to stick to your budget when the money is coming out of the account immediately.
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This is terrible advice. People like you are why so many people can't afford housing, even when they do have jobs.
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