I enthusiastically marched yesterday and at the demonstration in June, but I am against a third of those, skeptical of a third, and supportive of the rest. So I would be mostly against their causes. The No Kings rally yesterday focused on respecting the Constitution and opposing Executive overreach. My point is the longer the list demands, the greater the chance of alienating people.

ICE is trying to incite a riot in order to justify having the army flatten Portland

Or to justify bringing more military for law enforcement to normalize that and allow the president to declare martial law for political reasons. This is playing with fire. It’s hard to imagine a future president worse than Trump, but it’s possible, and citizens, local police, and possibly National Guard or military units could resist them militarily, and then we’re at civil war, which would be nightmare for everyone.

My gut feelings is it will be a lot like the dot-com bubble. The technology really will improve productivity and change the world. But there will be massive ups-and-downs that will last years. Only a few of the first movers will survive and thrive.

For example some credit cards have ridiculous ~~monthly ~~annual interest like 29.9% While offering a low 0.9% APR.

Some percentage of people will have some event in their life happen that causes them to keep a balance beyond the 5 months (March 2026), and they’ll make 29.9% interest from those customers. It’s a sketchy business model. Most customers will pay it off before the teaser rate ends, but it’s not worth the hassle unless you had some reason to borrow to want borrow a small amount of money and pay it off in 5 months before you heard about this offer.

Wise? Or unwise?

I think it’s unwise, even though your bank account probably pays more, so you could make money on the spread. It’s a hassle, a distraction, and a small but non-zero risk a payment won’t go through or something and you’ll end up paying fees or having to spend time getting them reversed. The after-tax earnings on the spread would be under $100 if you borrowed $10k on this card. Focus on doing the stuff that allowed you have a paid-off Mercedes and no debt.

This is disgraceful.

I didn’t like Florida that much when I lived there in the 80s and 90s. It sounds like it’s gotten worse.

They have been talking about making a show about the academy since the mid 90s. I’m optimistic about it.

The main benefit of a 529 is its gains are sheltered from taxes. If you’re in high school or college, you probably don’t pay a high tax rate, if any. I like a 529, but I wonder if it would be simpler for you to save in a regular bank account. There’s nothing wrong with the 529, though, if it’s not too complicated to set up.

The dealership or whatever bank they partnered with turned you down for a loan. Another bank might say yes, especially a bank that you’ve been using for other services for a while and if you’re making some down payment rather than borrowing the full price of the car.

I generally think car loans are a bad idea. If you have to drive a junky car while you save up money to upgrade, they may actually have done you a favor by saying no because you avoid interest payments and you avoid the risk of having to make payments during a situation where you lose you job or have some other unexpected expense.

Part of the goal is to have access to currency that’s usable outside the US.

For that I like BTC and physical gold coins.

The dollar crashing isn’t my only concern here - the US is going full Nazi, so being able to quickly gtfo is a big motivator right now.

I am hoping that trend doesn’t continue, but I think it’s wise to be prepared. I’m hoping in that unlikely scenario we would be able to stay under the radar and move our wealth offshore.

We have kids in 9th and 10th grade. If the trend from the last four months continues for another year, which I think is unlikely, we will encourage them to go to school abroad in a stable country. But I’m afraid President Reagan was right that “if we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.”

I agree with @davel@lemmy.ml. Don’t put too much effort into preparing for economic disasters, beyond normal recessions. Invest in good businesses that create value serving their customers. Have an emergency fund in interest-bearing savings account that’s easy to access.

Is the issue that you have given the govt electronic access to a particular account? You could revoke their access. If you’re really paranoid, you could change it to a different account in the same institution. I know there’s a lot of insanity in Washington, but I don’t see a scenario where it leads to errors where they wrongly take money from an account that you gave them access to for tax payment purposes.

I think a HYSA is the way to go. You could put some of it in stocks, but certainly be prepared for that portion of your car fund to go down. The stock market has done great in recent years, not something you can count on continuing.

I have heard this all my life, going back to the 80s. There are always high-interest loans that unsophisticated and desperate people take out. I don’t think there’s some unique new problem.

Your income is >> 4 * rent, so you should be fine. Is it in the US? USD$500 rent sounds very cheap, unless you’re renting just a small room.

Are the cards the problem? If you used other methods of payment, e.g. paper checks and cash, would you have the same problem. If so, find the root cause of the problem. If the cards are the problem, I would stop using them and forgo the bonus points. Maybe that costs you hundreds of dollars a year, but think of forgoing them as a bank “fee” that you pay in exchange for simplicity.

All of these groups, academia, the wealthy, attorneys, union members, leadership at public companies are all just people. You can’t look at the actions of members of those groups and dismiss everyone in them. It’s not a question of those groups or people. There are just people who have to have to support liberal democracy.

So far the political instability has not affected personal finance, but it will if we (everyone without regard to group membership) don’t respect basic rights and the law.

I would be concerned about a period of higher than normal inflation like the 70s. The Fed does a good job keeping inflation around 2%. Recently it spiked briefly to around 8% but immediately came down to just above 3%. It seems possible we could see a period of inflation near 8% for several years in a row.

I am unclear what to take away from this. It says nominal consumer debt is at and all-time high, but it’s not if you consider real (inflation-adjusted) numbers. It says the ratio of debt payments to disposable income is low compared to recent decades.

So it seems, contrary to the article’s title, that there hasn’t been a furious pace of change in consumer debt.