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277 points cebert | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.493s | source
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PostOnce ◴[] No.44361768[source]
Theoretically, credit should be used for one thing: to make more money. (not less)

However, instead of using it to buy or construct a machine to triple what you can produce in an hour, the average person is using it to delay having to work that hour at all, in exchange for having to work an hour and six minutes sometime later.

At some point, you run out of hours available and the house of cards collapses.

i.e., credit can buy time in the nearly literal sense, you can do an hour's work in half an hour because the money facilitates it, meaning you can now make more money. If instead of investing in work you're spending on play, then you end up with a time deficit.

or, e.g. you can buy 3 franchises in 3 months instead of 3 years (i.e. income from the 1 franchise), trading credit for time to make more money, instead of burning it. It'd have been nice had they taught me this in school.

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1. forrestthewoods ◴[] No.44364281[source]
> the average person

I’m pretty sure the median American does NOT carry a monthly CC balance. They pay it off in full every month.

But it’s very close to 50%. And may swing one side or the other depending on how fubar the economy is at that moment in time.

So what you said is true for roughly half of Americans. But not true at all for the other ~half.

I think.

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2. dgfitz ◴[] No.44368335[source]
I looked it up, and most of the sources seem sketchy (quora, lendingtree), but they agree with your number.

I think the kicker is, the ~50% of people who don't pay them off in full every month can have a massive amount of CC debt and struggle to even make a dent in it.