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Reply #10: It's like telling your children not to do something you know from experience [View All]

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magellan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-04-06 09:14 PM
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10. It's like telling your children not to do something you know from experience
...is bad. They don't have that experience. To them, what you're telling them is just a story -- they didn't have to live it and are sure they're different, it'll never happen to them. Inevitably they learn a lesson. But they have to learn it themselves, usually.

My dad was a kid during the Depression. When I was a kid he always used CASH to buy everything, including new cars. (We weren't rich, he just saved and saved and then did trade-ins.) When it came time for him to co-sign a loan for my first car, the dealer interrogated him up and down till I cried -- he had no credit history.

He now has a credit card but rarely uses it, only in necessity, and then it's paid off the following month. He never buys something on credit when he doesn't have the cash to back it up.

How do you pass that ethic on, especially when society nowadays is geared differently? They'd have you believe you're nothing without a traceable credit line. I almost fell for it, but I'm old enough to appreciate my dad's experience. We now have no credit cards and thumb our noses at whatever the credit companies think of us. Pity the fools who don't know better and live beyond their means.
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