Sunday, July 21, 2013

Stupid People Make Stupid Financial Decisions

I laugh when people waste money.  It's easy to accumulate wealth just be avoiding bad decisions and the stupid people who make them.  Here's today's run-down of stupidity on a blessed Sunday morning.

Rent-to-own.  I don't know why this business model still exists.  The interest you pay on renting a durable household good you later intend to purchase is as usurious as the annualized interest you'd pay if you purchased it with your credit card and carried the balance for years.  Maybe this is popular in that wedge of the population where low income intersects with low intelligence on a Venn diagram.

Smoking.  I just don't get this one.  Throw scientific studies in people's faces for years about the bad health effects of smoking and they do it anyway.  I never got started on any addictions because all of the anti-drug messages that bombarded me during my school years scared me straight while I was still impressionable.  People literally burn money.

College.  This is now the dumbest financial decision of them all.  Interest rates on federally-guaranteed student loans are about to go way up and yet people who shouldn't be attending college are still borrowing money they'll never earn for a degree that will never pay off.  Stupid people must really love indentured servitude, because that's what they'll get by working as baristas or warehouse clerks for thirty years to pay off student loans.

Hopeless people can't be helped.  I triage them out of my life so they can be someone else's problem.  Since this is Sunday, a lot of them might be praying for more money.  I don't attend church because I don't want these people hitting me up for cash.