When I was in my late teens I got a credit card to build my credit score. I did a great job with that and bought my first house at 20. It was ghetto, but hey I was ghetto so it was a natural fit. I kept my bills paid and my debt low when I was young. I may not have had my head on straight in many areas of my life, but I was pretty good with money. I was a college drop out with few skills though, so I didn’t make much money either. Still I plugged along with my 30,000 dollar house in the part of town where they rob and murder the Salvation Army man on Christmas. There wasn’t much to steal from me and I kept mostly to myself, it all worked.
Eventually, I noticed a pattern in my credit cards. They would raise my limits constantly. I only used them for a burger or a tank of gas once a month. They I paid it off my credit score went way up. I lived on tuna helper, bread and beans, ice cream sandwiches. My grocery budget was only 20 dollars a week but it was easy to make that work with dollar food down at the Save A Lot. It was a good life, I had a house and a car and my $9 an hour factory job got me by.
One time I decided to buy something big! A Bowflex! My laundry room had the space and my room mate was now covering a large chunk of my bills. I could afford to splurge. So I bought this expensive piece of exercise equipment and paid it out over 5 months at zero interest! It was a 12 month deal I think but I wasn’t about to get stuck paying interest. Because that went well I ventured into purchasing other non necessities on my credit cards. I figured out that if I paid off the entire balance every month there was no interest and the companies kept raising my limits.
If I got into a situation where I couldn’t pay the whole balance I just made my payment and then transferred the balance onto my other credit card. I never had to pay interest on anything! My credit scores was on the rise, my interest payments were zero and I was getting things I didn’t think I could afford so this felt like winning all around. In fact, this was a lucrative thing for me. I was getting cash back on top of it all, that cash went to make payments but they were free payments. I was basically printing money.
I had created my own Federal Reserve. I could get money out of thin air and over the course of a few years I spent 38,000 dollars more than I had. There was no end in sight either. My limits were nearly 50,000 dollars on each card and rising. I made some little payments and I was generating a lot of transaction fees for MasterCard. The worst thing that could happen is they stop raising my limits and I pay stop spending and pay it all back down, without interest, at my own leisurely pace. Everything was fine.
One day without notice, one of my cards just stops working. I called to find out what happened and apparently someone over the Chase took a good hard look at my system and decided they didn’t want to give me anymore money. They wouldn’t let my system continue and I was required to start making payments with interest. This almost bankrupted me and I was forced to spend the next seven years paying off the payment plan I worked out. It was like having a really high car payment with no car during that time. I couldn’t afford much in life during those years, I worked multiple jobs and lots of overtime. I started driving trucks because I could get my income up to a livable level.
Eventually, I struggled my way back to financial health but it was a hard fought lesson. I learned to really hate debt during that portion of my life. The thing about it is that our country is sitting in that same situation. We have spent a lot of free money for a lot of years. We are at the complete mercy of the bank. When the lenders decide to cut off the US, the US shuts down. The federal budget is almost half debt plus a lot of interest and the rates right now are zero. When the lenders of our government debt decide they just feel like it, they can run our rates up and cut off the new money. This would shut down 75% or more of the US government and everyone who is now receiving a check in any form would have a 75% chance of no longer getting that money.
Our country is completely at the mercy of the lenders but the interesting thing is, all other countries are in a similar position. The banking system holds all of the cards in the world system because they were able to sell the idea that debt can be helpful. It can’t ever help anyone, it can only enslave. The world is now enslaved to debt. But we as people living in this situation need to prepare our houses. We have to kill our debts as fast as possible. You never know what day the whole house of cards crashes down. There is no collapse siren to let us know that tomorrow is the day. But there are many warning signs that are flashing red, the day is close. It could be any day now that it all comes to a close and the greatest depression in history begins. Take away as much control from the system as you can, as fast as you can. Head for shelter immediately. Pay off debt, store food, own some silver and pray and you will be blessed during this time of trouble. May God bless all y’all.
Practice Outlaw 