wealth and debt
WEALTH AND DEBT – PROVERBS 22:1-5, 7, 16
WISDOM in our WALKING is WORSHIP with the INSTRUMENT of our lives…
U.S. household consumer debt profile • Average credit card debt: $15,480 • Average mortgage debt: $156,474 • Average student loan debt: $33,424
…Many Americans are in a precarious financial position. According to a survey released Tuesday by the financial monitor Bankrate.com, 28% of Americans have more credit card debt today than they have in a savings fund. That means that if one quarter of Americans even wanted to use their savings to pay off their debts at this moment, they wouldn’t be able to. Just 51% of Americans have more emergency savings than credit card debt, the lowest percentage since Bankrate begin tracking the issue in 2011. http://time.com/8740/federal-reserve-debt-bankrate-consumers-credit-card/
According to one 2007 survey, four in ten American credit card holders do not pay the full amount due every month on the card they use most often, despite the punitively high interest rates charged by credit card companies. Nearly a third (29 per cent) said they had no idea what the interest rate on their card was. Another 30 per cent claimed that it was below 10 per cent, when in reality the overwhelming majority of card companies charge substantially in excess of 10 per cent. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, Kindle edition, Location 172.
USURY
The church didn’t decide that usury was OK, however. Rather, it became much more precise in defining usury. Usury isn’t charging interest on a loan to offset the risk of the loan and the cost of forgoing other uses for the money…
…its unjustly charging someone for a loan by exploiting them when they are in dire straits. That’s the work of loan sharks, not banks. Jay W. Richards, Money, Greed and God – Why Capitalism is the Solution and not the Problem, 144.
Debt in God’s World By Timothy Deeds Well Thought, Issue 001, Sept 2012
WISDOM in our WALKING is WORSHIP with the INSTRUMENT of our lives…
U.S. household consumer debt profile • Average credit card debt: $15,480 • Average mortgage debt: $156,474 • Average student loan debt: $33,424
…Many Americans are in a precarious financial position. According to a survey released Tuesday by the financial monitor Bankrate.com, 28% of Americans have more credit card debt today than they have in a savings fund. That means that if one quarter of Americans even wanted to use their savings to pay off their debts at this moment, they wouldn’t be able to. Just 51% of Americans have more emergency savings than credit card debt, the lowest percentage since Bankrate begin tracking the issue in 2011. http://time.com/8740/federal-reserve-debt-bankrate-consumers-credit-card/
According to one 2007 survey, four in ten American credit card holders do not pay the full amount due every month on the card they use most often, despite the punitively high interest rates charged by credit card companies. Nearly a third (29 per cent) said they had no idea what the interest rate on their card was. Another 30 per cent claimed that it was below 10 per cent, when in reality the overwhelming majority of card companies charge substantially in excess of 10 per cent. Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, Kindle edition, Location 172.
USURY
The church didn’t decide that usury was OK, however. Rather, it became much more precise in defining usury. Usury isn’t charging interest on a loan to offset the risk of the loan and the cost of forgoing other uses for the money…
…its unjustly charging someone for a loan by exploiting them when they are in dire straits. That’s the work of loan sharks, not banks. Jay W. Richards, Money, Greed and God – Why Capitalism is the Solution and not the Problem, 144.
Debt in God’s World By Timothy Deeds Well Thought, Issue 001, Sept 2012
