A child of God educating other children.

Since Tim and I have been on the Dave Ramsey for a few months now, and helping out with a Dave Ramsey Sunday School class, I am starting to find things that credit card companies and banks try to pull on uneducated people kind of humorous. I lost count of how many credit card applications we get each week, we just rip them to pieces and throw them out. Today though, Bank of America caught my eye and made me laugh!

On the front of their envelope is printed, "An opportunity to help you pay off your debts Once and for all, all at once." My first reaction was "Right, what can Bank of America offer to help me get out of debt." It's their CleanSweep Debt Consolidation Plan, which would be nice if they would give you a low interest rate. Are they really trying to sell their plan with saying, "The CleanSweep loan offers rates as low as 9.99%..."? Which means that is the lowest they are willing to go, our highest interest rate we are paying is on my car, and it's lower than 9.99%. To me this doesn't sound smart at all.

Reading on, they will let you take out a $50,000 loan for only $790 for 96 months which equals you paying them back $75,840. How nice of them! Or you can go for $865 for 84 months which is $72,660. Crunching these numbers doesn't make me laugh at them anymore trying to "help" people, it makes me mad. In class yesterday we watched part of the Financial Peace University Video, and I got so ticked off at the lady who sold Tim and I our car. We didn't fall for what she was trying to tell us 'cause we weren't dumb enough to believe that, "it is better for you to pay the minimal payment on your loan each month than to pay it off quickly because your credit score will go up." I really hope she doesn't believe that herself, and I am glad that we found out shortly after buying my car that she didn't work for Saturn anymore.

Dave Ramsey has hit our town by storm. It is awesome to see everyone have their eyes open to all the myths that we are told about money. And it makes me sad that Tim and I still have people close to us that roll their eyes or laugh whenever we tell them about the Total Money Makeover that we have already seen personally really does work to get out of debt, and stay out.

Posted in: Bank of America, Dave Ramsey, finances on Monday, January 14, 2008 at at 9:52 AM