Offer for a Loan at 30% Interest

The other day I got a loan offer in the mail from some company called Springleaf (if it looks like a payday lender, and sounds like a payday lender...) They say I can borrow $5,250 at get this - an interest rate of 29.43 percent. I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. I'm still laughing like two days later. Who in their right mind would borrow money at that interest rate. Actually, if you're borrowing money at any interest rate you need your head examined, but nearly 30%?! LOL What do I look like? Stupid?

I thought about sending the thing back to them with something funny written on it, but that would cost me a stamp, and I don't think it's worth that. Speaking of profitable, this company would exist if people didn't borrow money from them. People, people, people, you're not broke because you don't earn enough money at your job. You're broke because you keep giving the banks, the payday lenders, the mortgage company, the car loan company, the credit card companies, the Dept. of Education servicer, the loan sharks, etc. ad infinitum, all of your disposable income, and then some! Just STOP IT!

Makes me think of this:

 

"The borrower is SLAVE to the lender," and this is not rendered obsolete by the Thirteenth Amendment. When you are in debt up to your eyeballs, the debt informs your life, your choices, your career opportunities. The debt is your master, literally, and you, it's slave.

Daylight savings time... ugh!

I hate it when they change the time. Even though it's only an hour, it throws me completely off. As if that wasn't enough, I had just gotten everything cleaned up from the dogs, fed them, and made breakfast when my sister-in-law called me to tell me that there was a break in the water line up at the pump house. So we were without water for most of the afternoon. Luckily, my brother-in-law knows how to fix a pipe, and he got to work on it and after a trip to the hardware store got it fixed up (in the rain no less). It hasn't rained much in forever, and it rains today. It never fails that every time the in-laws go to Venice, something goes wrong.

At breakfast I read an article in the paper about how terrible it is that poor people have to pay more for college than rich people. I call shenanigans. That and I wonder what people are thinking when they have no money and go to a private school to get a degree they could have gotten at a State school. I wouldn't know anything about that /snark. To be fair though, when I got my degree, one could not get a degree in animation just anywhere. The choices were limited. Now however, they are not. Plenty of public universities offer degrees in animation/3d imaging/etc. And it's sheer stupidity to go to a private school when you are poor, unless you are getting the majority of it paid for in aid/grants that don't have to be paid back. IT'S STUPID. And I should know.

I forgot to write here the last couple of days because I've had my nose stuck in ancestry.com. I probably shouldn't have, but it's Spring break, so I signed up for a month of access. I have an interest in genealogy and every once in a while take another stab at where I left off. The only problem is, the more you research, the more people wind up in your tree, and the more work it takes to get back another generation. It's all exponential after all.

 I only had a little freelance today, and no school this week, so back to genealogy... maybe I should look at getting paid to research stuff LOL

The Real World: Not a fun place for the Unprepared

I have a hard time understanding the unmotivated and careless. It frustrates me to no end. I myself am very motivated, almost to the point of being cutthroat at times (I have to restrain myself). I also care about what I'm interested in. The same can't be said of some. They stumble through life, not bothering to assess whether what they are doing is working or not. They're quick to blame others for their own mistakes, and as a result, learn nothing.

Then there's the other extreme, the ones who are so focused on their own thing, that they won't follow simple instructions. You're bothering them with your instructions. Did I mention that I teach college? I'm just a part-time adjunct, but I love teaching, it's really a fun exercise (on occasion it may seem in futility). There are always students who I just want to take by the shoulders and shake them like they do in the old movies and ask them if they understand how the decisions they are making now are going to wind up ruining the rest of their lives. Or maybe not ruining per se, but rather making their futures limited and incredibly difficult. I couldn't do that though. It's no longer socially acceptable to tell people the truth.

At any rate, if you desire to be an artist, you should avoid student loans. They are a burden. "The borrower is slave to the lender," which coincidentally, wasn't coined yesterday despite the looming student loan debt crisis in this country. It's from the Bible (Prov. 22:7). Even people from thousands of years ago understood that debt was bad, even if they did think the earth was quite flat. You have a whole generation of people now who don't understand the correlation between their situation and their outstanding debts. They wonder where all their money goes (to the banks), and they wonder why the can't get ahead (quit making stupid decisions). It's easy to be a starving artist when you don't have Sallie Mae breathing down your neck. But try waiting tables with private art school debt hanging over your head (or any other kind of debt for that matter). If you have no debt, the conversation becomes completely different.

Speaking of the Bible, I think some of my student are offended at the religion that makes up the majority of traditional art. I wonder if they understand that for painters a long time ago, it was the church paying the artists' bills and putting food on the table. I don't know what they're doing in high schools nowadays, but most of my students have never heard of many of the old artists whose work hangs in museums around the world. In the twelve years that they spend in grade school funded by the taxpayer, their education didn't even include bothering to mention Degas, Renoir or Monet or anyone else of note. They've only heard of Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and Leonardo because of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. How can one aspire to be an artist without having studied art? Some are obviously not even interested in the field they're supposedly trying to enter. I suppose I could understand that if there was money involved, however, the stereotype of the starving artist is a stereotype for a reason. Either you love art, or what are you doing in it?

It's okay to not know what you want to do with your life. It's an entire other thing to go into thousands of dollars in debt and not know why you're doing it. If you need to find yourself, it's much cheaper to backpack in Europe than pay for college. You might also see the paintings of some famous artists while you're there.