Topic: Bitcoin's Usefulness - So utterly apparent (Read 9421 times)

Combine that with the $1000 daily limit that is imposed on many savings accounts, and that means you can only withdraw $6000 a month from a savings account. With restrictions like that, you can't pay cash for that $200,000 reaper.

I'm sorry, I though it was obvious after the housing bubble and how widely publicized it was.

In the USA "own a home" most frequently means "have a mortgage to pay" or "have a home equity line of credit to pay".  The actual home-owners are surprisingly rare, especially in the more prestigious or upscale locations. The stress caused by high debt load in turn causes many family problems.

On the other hand "voluntary debt slavery" may be considered a new social glue for the USA. There's no easier man to scare that the one who has a mortgage and lifestyle to maintain.

Edit: OK, I think I just gotten myself trolled. Here's the quote from the redneck link I posted above. And with this quote I'm going to end participating in this thread.

Living around Rednecks has had a profound effect on my way of looking at life.  Once while driving my fancy new car, I visited a country cousin and committed what Redneck Theologists call the “sin of pride” when I mentioned that the car had cost me a fortune.  In good humor, he pointed to his giant farm tractor and said, “Well, I’m impressed. See that reaper over there?  She cost me over $200,000.00; I paid cash; and I reckon I only take her out a few weeks a year”.  Man, was I ever humbled in the presence of such profound Redneck wisdom.  I now think twice before bragging.

Can you explain the difference to us?  You seem to know everything, but you also seem unwilling to share your vast knowledge.

The phrase "my own home" means something else in the USA than throughout the rest of the world.

In fact, the American society is so diverse, that even in the USA this phrase lost any meaning without the cultural context.

http://dba-oracle.com/redneck.htm

Age isn't a number. The best phrase I heard about this is from my former landlord and a real-estate manager who insisted on face-to-face meetings to ascertain the credit rating: "fifty going on fifteen".

Please feel free to call yourself "young at heart" if "youngster" was offensive. I apologise.

Pure genius. How else could someone know I live paycheck to paycheck, use pawn shops and payday lenders, built my own home to suit, and at the same time can write a check to buy a new car. THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!

Interesting. I wasn't necessarily referring to a score as such, I simply stated credit in general. Although I have made use of the 3 free reports per year to ascertain my creditworthiness, since they are free after all.
I'll also give you some interesting tidbits so that you may continue to draw conclusions. For instance, I make heavy use of electronic transactions (ACH, credit/debit cards, etc.) because they are convenient and because I am not charged anything to do so. Indeed, I am paid to do so in some cases, particularly in the example of credit cards with "reward points" and such.

You could say that that is my effort to leach off of a failed system, but we all know that the ones footing the bill are the merchants and the ones that pay the sky-high percentages and fees when they dare to use their credit beyond where they are able to repay. That is one of the reasons I discovered and embraced Bitcoin - it allows me the convenience of online payments without enriching an existing infrastructure.

And guesses as to my age by others here have been all over the map, ranging from really low to really high, so perhaps I am obtuse enough to be confusing.

I presume that with your car dealership story you've meant to convey that you are an experienced point-of-sale credit user, that you've obtained car loans from the car salespeople, morgage from the builder's salespeople, player credit at the casino cage, etc.

In that case the secret you are missing could probably be expressed in the old Jewish proverb: "Don't ask the tailor if the suit fits."

I apologise if I misunderstood you and the "nothing more than a signature" was in fact a signature on your check that your presented to the fleet sales rep at the car dealer's.

Ah, a land-less and family-less youngster whith a post-secondary education (or while obtaining a post-secondary degree) with "stellar" debt-slave score. I just hope that you aren't black, because my pot-shot was all equal-opportunity, non-discriminatory and race-blind.

I'll tell you the story. Years ago I went to the bookstore to pick up a special order. Due to mistakes the book I was handed was something like "Proceedings of a TRW conference on numerical modeling in consumer finance {or some such}". It was raining so I spent couple of hours flipping through it, but I now still regret not buying it.

There was a ton of super-interesting nuggets in it, but I particularly remember the "behavioral modeling" chapter. There was a matrix of data from MBNA who used to run credit cards affiliated with professional associations. In most of the upper bands of income the most profitable (for MBNA) card was ADA (American Dental Association) and the worst performing was AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants). Not surprisingly dentists had higher credit scores than accountans, normalized for all other factors.

The moral of this story? The "credit score" isn't meant to measure the likelihood of you repaying the debt. It is meant to measure how profitable of a customer you are going to become for the credit grantor. There exist people who wouldn't consider "high credit score" to be something to be proud of.

Can you really compute 6 sha256 sums in 1000 seconds without a computer?  That's impressive.

I too have found it very taxing on my memory to perform hash operations in my mind.  I am only able to perform about 0.000000003 MH/s mentally, and will probably need to drive to the moon to have enough time to solve a block that way.

in re. miscounting: When the teller was counting the bills, she must have gotten it mixed up in her mind between $1,900 and $2,000. Ed and I were only expecting $1,900. The final count came to $1,920 somehow (perhaps new bills stuck together, for a majority of them were crisp). She recounted and it came to $1,920 once again. But instead of returning a $20 bill to the till, she reached into the till and pulled out 4 $20 bills. She adds them to the pile and presents them all with a final count of $2,000 to Ed.

I pretty sure that they could have gave him/us a few hundred dollar bills, but I firmly believe that a vindictive attitude sat in, as in, "Take that you bastards, and you're not getting your dicks sucked either!"

Speaking of dick sucking, she really didn't think, let alone say, that. If you read my (true) story carefully, you'll see that I infected that aspect twice for humor purposes only. Sorry for any confusion.

I just reread my account to hunt down what you mean by "the perfect timing with the other client", but it seems to elude me. I did realize something though. Why did she ask if big bills would be fine, but proceeded to only give twenties? Taxing my memory, I seemed to hash that same thought in my mind while driving to Wisconsin. That, and Matthew eating pet dogs (with names).  

~Bruno~

I don't get it either.  I don't regularly use a savings account, and I haven't pawned anything in my life.  If I walk into a car dealership, I consider it a given that I can drive away in anything I want, brand new and fully loaded, with nothing more than a signature.  So what is the secret I am missing?

I think he just has a chip on his shoulder about something and is trying to transfer it to you.

I'm not sure I understand either, but from what I gather, 2112 is saying that I am a credit risk because I perform many transactions per month, or something.

I'm not sure how it is relevant, especially given my stellar credit, but

I don't follow at all.  What does this have to do with credit/financing?  We are talking about deposit accounts.

I'm not interested in providing credit counseling to the "how-much-per-month" crowd. There are at least two industries providing that advice in the USA: one for-profit and one non-profit. They have quite respectable success ratios. But as they say in a joke:

Q: How many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Normally just one, but the lightbulb has to want to change.

How will saving his money in a checking account that yields higher interest than a savings with less restrictions hurt his finances?

What can I say to that? I envision for you the future of using check cashing, payday loan, rent-to-own & pawn shop establishments.

It can happen to anyone; I'm not sure if this is the correct link for Collateral Lender of Beverly Hills. It is a lifestyle choice and also probably lasts a lifetime.

http://www.collaterallender.com/

Or maybe your future wife will be your credit manager? I've seen that too.

Indeed.  I have a savings account with $5 in it because it is required to be a member of my credit union.  Everything else (USD-wise) goes in checking.  Actually, I have a small savings account that I share with my fiance that gets $10/week for each of us, but we may convert it to a checking at some point.  We have never had to make more than 2 withdrawals a month, and even checking account interest is crap so it's just not worth the hassle.