An excellent and very readable white paper on this timely topic. Learn how you and your children are being intellectually disarmed in public schools so that you’ll be easier to manipulate in the coming planned financial meltdown. (PDF format, Adobe Acrobat Reader required):
http://applianceguru.com/documents/Coming_Financial_Crash.pdf
Unreal white paper. Where did you score this? I Google’d for Kent Daniel Bentkowski and found some interesting things on this cat. Odd or extremely grounded? You decide.
Well, obviously I’ve decided he views the world pretty much like I do– that’s why I posted his white paper. For me, Kent’s paper wasn’t earth-shattering as much as it was a nice articulation of a world view I already have.
I think most important thing anyone should take away from this paper is this, “Get out of debt now!”
While I agree that the US finances may be near a crisis, the paper is off in some respects. It is purpoted to be authored by an investment banker, but on page 16 it says the stocks of GM and Ford were downgraded to junk. Their bonds were, yes, but not the stock, an investment banker would surely know this. I overlooked this, but on page 19 the author calls the total interest charges for a 30 year home mortgage a sign of compounded interest, but compares it to the “simple” interest paid on a $100,000 investment at 7.2% for only one year. Apples to oranges, after that I lost all respect and stopped reading, even though it had some good points.
I am a mortgage banker and his article is 100% wrong on simple vs compound interest. $100,000 loan at 7% annual interest! That is simply $7,000 in interest the first year. Using a regular 30 Year fixed mortgage it would be less than $7,000, since your paying some principal every month. That is why an amortization calculation is used. All of this is basic stuff, taught in Finance 101 which makes me really question his comment on being an investment banker. Just because he didn’t take a Business class his Sophmore year of High School, like most of my school did he calls it the dumbing down of America. I think he nothing more than a left over Hippy.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bentkowski doesn’t go far enough in his outrage toward credit card companies. It’s not enough to merely pay off your credit cards each month, you should get rid of them entirely! They really aren’t needed but people have simply bought into the lie that they’re a “convenience”. My wife and I stopped using credit cards in August of 2003 and we finally paid off the last one in January of 2005 ($22,000 in total). We have operated on a cash-only basis since August of ’03 and will be paying off our 2nd mortgage this week. That will leave our only debts as being the house payment and one car payment, and those are both in the crosshairs now.
Anyone can do this, but it does take exactly what Mr. Bentkowski says: fiscal responsibility and psychological restraint. Or, as Dave Ramsey (www.daveramsey.com) says about the current state of consumerism in the US, “If this is normal, then I want to be weird.”