Tuesday, August 14, 2007

I Want The Financial Industry To Die. Now.



what the fuck?! why should any student have to pay a convenience fee to use a credit card to pay tuition and fees? full-time enrollment bills are about 4000-4500 dollars at Umass Boston. a student would have to pay a fee of over a hundred dollars for the privilege of paying their bill with a credit card. what the hell has happened to people that they silently and willingly take a royal ass-raping for the privilege of paying bills? i won't be taking it, but then i'm able to sport the cash for my classes up front. poor students who have to use credit cards because they don't have all the money right away are the ones who are getting raped. i am sick of the credit industry. i want to see it strangled, drowned, hanged and burned in effigy.

12 comments:

Joe said...

Well... it does kinda suck on the face of it, but as someone who works for a quasi-esteemed institution of higher learning, I can just say that i know for a fact that schools are doing that just so that they can offer credit card payment as an option. My Quasi-Esteemed Institution doesn't yet accept the plastic, but is expected to sometime in the next few years and will probably do the same thing. Look at it this way: if the institution were willing to absorb the fees itself, that would be 2%-3% of payments skimmed off the total revenue. So why offer credit card as a payment option at all if that's the case? That 2%-3% is probably the operating budget of an entire small academic department per campus...

emily1 said...

i'm not blaming the university. my school used to offer credit card payment themselves and absorbed the costs. they've outsourced it to cut costs which have spiraled out of control in the last five years.

i do hate the financial industry, though.

hate. it. passionately.

especially for the way they've exploited students over the last few years. this is just one more example of the way college students struggling to join the middle class or at least stay in the middle class are nickeled and dimed to death.

FM said...

is it just me? does anyone else get the sneaking feeling that no one cares about the state of affairs for the people swimming in the bottom 10% of the wealth pool? this includes everyone from the absolutely destitute to the upper middle class. (the upper middle what you say? upper middle class is roughly $150k a year before tax. try footing the $50k a year bill it takes to send your kid to private college nowadays. yeah, that's what i thought.)

i don't get it. there are more of us (i.e. the super-broke to the dodos taking out a mortgage on their mcmansions) than there are of the super rich. isn't this a fucking democracy?

how do people get away with this shit?

it's because the people in the bottom 10% are pitted against each other, while the super rich profit off of all of us.

hello! we're all in the bottom 10%. let's band together and fix this shit!

rant over.

emily1 said...

is it just me? does anyone else get the sneaking feeling that no one cares about the state of affairs for the people swimming in the bottom 10% of the wealth pool?

well, everyone in america likes to call themselves and think of themselves as 'middle class' whether they're dirt poor or make half a million dollars a year. being poor carries a stigma (lazy, stupid, worthless, a nobody, etc.), so most people don't want to identify with the poor.

so, instead they flatter themselves that they're like the rich and if they only had enough money, they would be able to drink beers and rub elbows with the rich. not only that, some of them actually think they have a chance of becoming that wealthy.

FM said...

well, everyone in america likes to call themselves and think of themselves as 'middle class' whether they're dirt poor or make half a million dollars a year. being poor carries a stigma (lazy, stupid, worthless, a nobody, etc.), so most people don't want to identify with the poor.

so, instead they flatter themselves that they're like the rich and if they only had enough money, they would be able to drink beers and rub elbows with the rich. not only that, some of them actually think they have a chance of becoming that wealthy.


i do believe you are right. the upper middle class is the worst. they think they're rich, but they're the ones the really rich people are profiting from. they sit around in their big houses blissfully in denial about their big fat credit card lines and jumbo loans (although this practice is being curbed) - hey buttheads, if you were really rich, you wouldn't need jumbo loans! and they're vice president of such and such, which strokes their egos, yet they're not on the board of directors and/or not one of the primary shareholders, so really, their labor is being exploited just like everyone else. yet they look down upon the poor, because everyone likes to look down upon someone.

yes, the upper middle class has it way way better than the poor, but when you take a step back, it's totally ridiculous how the wealth is distributed in this country. okay, it's not like brazil or mexico where it's way way worse, but work with me here... the difference between the poor and the upper middle class is so miniscule compared to the upper middle class and the wealthy.

anyway, it's funny how we're all trying to scrape our way into the top of the bottom 10% of the wealth bracket. if this scheme were a law school, the career counselor's advice would be to drop out immediately.

Unknown said...

You're right emily1. The victims here are the poor students. They have no choice but to use their credit cards to finance their needs.

There's this article about how to Avoid Student Credit Card Debt. I think students can learn some effective strategies on how to eliminate debt by reading that article.

emily1 said...

is that last comment spam? should i delete it?

i wouldn't even give a shit about the huge gap between the top and the bottom if the people at the bottom could afford housing, health care, education and a little entertainment. in addition to having adequate leisure time to actually enjoy their lives.

FM said...

You're right emily1. The victims here are the poor students. They have no choice but to use their credit cards to finance their needs.

and more and more students are financing their education and expenses with credit cards these days. more and more students are falling into the "poor" category. and HELL YEAH i'm going to place some of the blame on the universities, who are raising tuitions at a rate that is over twice the inflation rate.

my sister is a physician, as is her husband, and both of them voiced their concerns that they won't be able to afford college for their baby son and future kids. i laughed. "you're doctors. you have nothing to worry about." and they said, "go calculate a 7% tuition increase per year for the next 18 years." starting with $35,000, i came up with $120,000 a year 18 years from now.

i think i'm going to go barf.

FM said...

wow, i just responded to comment spam. i think it was created by an actual human being, but still... how irritating.

FM said...

*cough cough*

getting back to the financial industry... do check out the latest headline news.

there goes the dow!

emily1 said...

i know. i guess this means my 401K is dropping like a rock too. frack. the middle class can't win no matter what it does.

one can do all the right things like going to college, paying one's loans on time, avoiding credit card debt and contributing heavily to a 401K account, but still end up treading water at best and losing one's shirt at worst.

FM said...

all i have is a measly roth ira, because i'm trying to pay off my law school loans, and my firm doesn't match the 401k. i don't even check the balance in my roth, because it's so pathetic.

some of my law school buddies have even more debt that they're only paying interest on, because they can't afford paying anything more, no retirement account, no savings account, and mountains of credit card debt.

all law schools ranked below #75 in the u.s. news and world report should be shut down and turned into affordable housing complexes.