Consumer loan - a fur coat or a car on credit

Every day I receive SMS with a proposal to take a consumer loan. Banks and other financial organizations are trying in every way to convince me to take a loan from them.

So far it has not succeeded and I hope it will never succeed. Why? This publication will tell you in detail about all the secrets and pitfalls of loans. I hope this will be useful to someone, and will be able to warn against mistakes that can spoil your whole life.

Everyone wants to live beautifully and comfortably. We wish to live in spacious comfortable apartments, drive expensive cars and dress in expensive stylish clothes. If it is not important for someone, and it is enough to be content with little, there is no point in reading further, everything is fine with you. If you're looking to surround yourself with the best things right now, read to the end.

Banks literally impose to take a loan. They are trying to persuade us to take a loan on TV, on the Internet and via SMS, there are billboards of banks on the streets - money is offered everywhere!

There are a lot of goods in stores, whatever your heart desires, everything can be bought. Buy right now, the main thing is to have money! Sometimes the desire for a fur coat or a new laptop is so strong that people take out a loan. They pay and get the first experience of buying on credit. Then they convince themselves that otherwise they would not be able to buy this thing, since their money is not delayed. Then they take a new loan, and then they collect credit cards and plunge into a state, the name of which I will not pronounce out loud ...

Why does this happen?

People cease to reasonably compare their capabilities and desires. You need to be realistic about your purchases. If you can't pay for fur coat within 2-4 months, this purchase is beyond your power, and taking loan for the purchase of an expensive fur coat, you fall into bondage to the bank.

Before taking out a loan, think - Do you have any relatives or acquaintances from whom you can borrow money?

Many retirees are inclined to save and perhaps even your grandmother has 200-300 thousand in the bank account. The bank pays the grandmother interest. Ask what percentage?

The difference between the interest that the bank pays to depositors and the interest on the loan can be 3-4 times, sometimes more. The grandmother will be given 8 percent for a year, and the same bank will take 25-30 percent from you. Think about it, maybe it is better to borrow money from relatives or friends? Borrowing at interest slightly higher than the bank pays them is still more profitable than taking a loan from the bank.

Talk about this with people from whom you can expect help. Offer 10 percent per annum. Today (autumn 2013) this is a good interest on deposits, or rather, such a percentage is not so easy to get - you have to put a significant amount for a long time.

If none of your relatives and friends trusts you and does not give you money, this is a reason to think about your life! Your life is not going as it should, you are surrounded by people who do not trust you. If this is the case, then by taking a loan from the bank, you will only complicate your future life.

I know perfectly well how I want to buy something expensive and desired right now, but I managed to learn how to control my desires. I buy only those things for which I do not need to take out a bank loan, or I have the opportunity to borrow from my own, with the condition of full payment within 2-4 months.

Everyone wants more, but to surround yourself with more expensive things, you need to earn more! Consumer loans and even more so credit cards cannot solve your financial problems, you can only complicate your life and make it shorter through worries ...

Next, I quote from a story that examines the life of a person who trusted banks and credit cards. This story is taken from Oleg Makarenko.

There is a character named Petya in the text, I don’t change the name, everything is as in the original source. It doesn't matter what the person's name is Petya or Masha. Even if you are the Beauty Alinochka, the bank is in any case equally harsh and demanding to everyone, it will ruin your nerves and peel off three skins, regardless of your merits. The bank does not care how good a person you are, it has its own task - to rip off customers and make money.

The mechanism for withdrawing money from the population through credit cards.

The mechanism is simple, organized in such a way that victims of credit cards usually do not even understand exactly how they are pulling money from them. Loan addicts realize that they are paying the bank a very substantial tribute every month, but they do not notice the hook on which the bank is holding them.

Let's analyze specific numbers using the example of the manager Petya Klyushkin.

Petya earns 30 thousand rubles a month. At the same time, he has several credit cards for a total of 100 thousand rubles. Petya pays banks about 36 thousand rubles a year for servicing cards: or 3 thousand rubles a month. The amount is absolutely exorbitant: 36% per annum. And Petya understands that this is a lot, but he cannot do anything about it. Instead of closing his cards, Petya constantly stocks up various goods in stores.

Why it happens?

But put yourself in Petya's shoes. He, like most people, has various habitual expenses. Rent, food, bad habits. Petya is a completely adequate slave of capitalism - he lives within his means and does not commit madness. Petya would have been able to shrink by 3 thousand rubles and give the bank interest.

However, here the same magic hook comes into play, on which Petya is kept banks. This hook is called the "minimum payment" - a part of the debt that must be closed in order not to get penalized. Typically, this payment is 10% of the total debt. That is, in Petya's case, 10 thousand rubles.

So that's it. Petya is not able to pay the minimum payment: he will have to shrink too much for this. But it is also impossible not to pay the minimum payment: defaulters are punished by the bank. And Petya has only one thing left: to refinance.

Petya receives a salary and honestly puts a minimum payment of 10 thousand rubles on the cards. And then he spends this money from the card on various necessary and unnecessary purchases: since tightening the belt and starving is too psychologically difficult for him. That's the whole banking trick - so simple and transparent that it is not even perceived as a deception.

Note the significant difference with a lighter drug, with consumer credit. If Petya took on credit, say, a large LCD TV, Petya would regularly extinguish it in fixed amounts from month to month until he got rid of the loan at the root.

But this does not work with credit cards: because of the uncomfortable minimum payment, Petya is forced to live in an extremely unfavorable cycle for him: to pay off part of the loan every month, and then choose it back. Extinguish and choose. Extinguish and choose ... By retirement, the bank will pull from Petya an amount comparable to the cost of an apartment. And Petya will receive in return the dubious pleasure of spending 100 thousand rubles in his youth, and then refinancing them for the rest of his life ...

You may have noticed that your comrades who are on a credit needle regularly say: "Let me pay with a card, and you will give me your share in cash." As a rule, the point here is precisely the minimum payment - these poor fellows have already made the minimum payment, and now they need to choose a loan back to make ends meet.

It would seem, why such tricks? Why can't they just go to the ATM and withdraw the amount they need from there?

Because banks are not that stupid. If you let Petya get cash without interest, he will not refinance on extortionate credit card terms.Petya will simply put 10 thousand on the card every month, then immediately withdraw 7 thousand in cash, and then slowly pay off the loan with the money saved.

Therefore, in most banks, for withdrawing money from credit cards, you will be punished with the most severe commission: which can sometimes go up to almost 10% of the amount received. You can withdraw from debit cards even until you blue in the face: the commission for withdrawing your own funds is usually zero.

Okay, you say, but where is the hook here? Is it really so difficult not to spend money on various nonsense for several months? Why can't Petya push himself up and still somehow close his credit cards in order to escape from the bank's tenacious clutches?

For the same reason that people cannot give up junk food, a sedentary lifestyle and wasting free time on the Internet. Because the spirit is strong, and the flesh is weak, and the coolest professionals in their field seduce us. In slot machines, by the way, everything is also clear to everyone: do not play, and you will not lose. However, people do play them ...

Of course, in an amicable way, the state should have banned credit cards as a class. This is taking money away from the population in its purest form, it does not bring any benefit to the economy. Various tricks like "free period of 60 days" are analogous to a gift handful of chips in a casino. Not everyone can start playing and not get hooked on the credit needle. But, alas, society does not yet consider credit cards to be something bad - just as it did not consider it relatively recently to be something bad, for example, tobacco and alcohol.

To summarize, the hardest part about credit cards is admitting a problem. If the patient admits that credit cards are unconditional robbery, and that they must be got rid of immediately, it is already easier to find a concrete way to resolve the issue.

You can take one large consumer loan, close all credit cards for it and calmly pay off for two or three years as a much lower percentage. You can give up your vacation, sell a car or somehow collect the amount you need to settle with the extortionists. Finally, you can put your credit cards out of your wallet and take them with you only on payday - to pay off another portion of your debt.

The main thing is to understand that over the past couple of centuries the usurers have changed, if only for the worse. They understand the word "cooperation" unambiguously: as the process of pumping money from yours into their pocket.

Conclusions - loans should be taken only for business development, when the loan will bring you more money than you pay interest.