Quote:
|
Originally Posted by mixedmedia
It's very easy to tell someone who doesn't have another immediate choice not to go into that check cashing place and cash their check so they can go into the grocery store right next door and buy food for their family.
These 'businesses' exploit and make a lot of money off of poor people. You really cannot rationalize it in my mind.
|
I respect your difference of opinion, but I can't say that I agree
If you can afford to pay the ridiculous fees, you'd be hard pressed to not have the money to buy that $.25 package or ramen or whatever.
Although I understand people come across hard times, and sometimes the difficulty (or sheer expensiveness) is impossible for someone to overcome.
However, I'm talking about the general situation - the "hard" times that can be foreseen - car repairs, insurance premiums, things of that nature that so often result in a trip to one of these businesses. If someone plans ahead and lives within their means (even if that requires them to get a second job or whatever) they should be able to weather the storms, so to speak, and fall back on a bit of money they have tucked away for situations like these.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by mixedmedia
And insufficient funds fees are insane. And yet, if you have good enough credit, your account can be protected from these fees. Therefore, they are largely, what I consider to be, stealing from people who are already in a hard place. And not only that, by taking these monies out of people's accounts, they are making their accounts vulnerable to bouncing even more checks. It's a fucking scam. And the banks have to be making hundreds of millions if not more on them.
|
Banks are probably making a lot more than hundreds of millions - but that's not really the point. Although I see the worth "Exploit" and "Stealing" thrown around a lot when discussions such as these arise, I can't say that I'm comfortable with either term. The fees, conditions, penalties, ect are all laid out in front of you prior to you being required to pay anything. If I was passing someone on the street and told someone that if they give me $10.00 I'll take it and not give you anything in return, then am I stealing if they decide to give me $10.00? I don't think so, they're simply making a really bad choice. I don't see anything different when it's between companies and individuals either, because those companies are
composed of individuals.
Especially publicly traded companies, such as many of the banks out there. Not only do the employees of the bank decide what policies to implement, ultimately, the stockholders do - the hundreds of thousands of people - if not millions of people - that own the company.
People are getting exactly what they sign up for. I don't know why that's a surprise, nor do I understand why suddenly offering a service makes you into a monster. The reason check cashing companies charge those ridiculous rates isn't simply for profit - the profit margins are not as high as one might initially think - though I'm not trying to imply they're small, either - it's because the people they are lending money to have such a low repayment rate. If you lend $100 to 10 people and only 6 of them ever pay you back, you need to charge those six a pretty substantial amount to not only break even but to feed your own family at the end of the day.
One could argue that the reason someone would knowly utilize such an expensive loan is because their credit is so poor they wouldn't qualify for a conventional bank loan. It's a vicious cycle that could easily be broken providing no extraordinary circumstances come about - like huge medical bills or whatever.
*********************
Edit
*********************
I just brought this up to my wife to see what she would have to say, and she gave a really good example.
When intially dating someone, don't you generally try to at least get a grasp of how they are doing financially? She gave the example of going to a singles bar - if someone approached you and you immediately found out that they were unemployed, overloaded in debt, and had no way to repay it - wouldn't that be a huge red flag?
I can't say that I would actually go out and check a future mate's credit rating, nor would I advocate that, but I would say that it does have an impact. Knowing my wife as I do, I can't say that I wouldn't be with her now if she had really poor credit. However, I can tell you that the chances of us dating as seriously as we did (eventually turning into marriage) is not very likely if I had known from the start that she was financially irresponsible.
Fortunately, I lucked out and we both have similar views on finances