I can honestly tell you that if you guys expect to safely invest in stocks RIGHT NOW and expect a return, given the whole INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY has no legs to stand on, you might as well be playing Russian Roulette.
ok, i owe a collection agency a total of $1750 in unsecured debt :sad:. I know i can negotiate to bring the price down a little bit but i donât know how to go about doing so. Tips would be very appreciated :wgrin:
Getting a return RIGHT NOW should never be an investments goal. Think long term. The market WILL recover. And when you see stocks dip into an undervalued state, you should BUY.
Behavioral Finance is the plague of the market. Too many investors act on whims and their âemotional feelingsâ, which is why the market fluctuates as much as it does. A smart investor can capitalize on this, and make good buys on strong stocks which have taken a downturn due to the fickleness of most investors.
A smart investor will also wait until the market plateaus before putting any money into stocks. Right now, there really isnât a plateau in sight for a year or so.
i realize what youâre saying and perhaps its true, perhaps the falloffs havenât finished and its not the right phase to ambitiously buy everything in site. but there are so many different strategies when it comes to the stock market that blanket statements dont help anyone
there are smart investors buying stocks right now. the people i talk to who lost money in stocks usually arent bargain hunters who bought cheap (read: during a crash) and got paid dividends while they waited for a recovery, its the people who wait and wait and wait for other people to make the moves and buy after itâs too late.
if youve already heard the good news, its too late to make the most money off of it. fortune favors the brave!
most collection agencies already expect to do this as plan B (settle the debt). just tell them you cant afford to pay the full amount, theyâll ask how much you can pay, play the game, be clever, and use your instincts to make sure youâre getting the best deal they can possibly give you (there is a limit). also make sure to try and get them to promise to remove the negative reporting from your credit report completely, not just report it as âpaidâ or âsettled.â colectors are desperate to cure accounts and if its in their power they will do this and it is light years better for your fico. just make sure to get ANY and all agreements in writing first before you pay a dime
also, always at least try to dispute a debt before shelling out that money. there are some lazy agencies out there who wont do what they have to in the alotted time to prove that the debt is yours, letting you get off scott free. kind of like how you should always challenge a traffic ticket in court. its a semi-complicated process, but there are reading materials out there so do your due diligence, its worth it.
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^ âplateauâ means itâs not going down any further, i.e. itâs at its lowest price. you always prefer the lowest price to just a low price.
So someone did an ID theft on me a few years ago & i ended up getting a $650 bill from SprintâŚI never bother paying them back & tried numerous times to obtain their ID fraud formsâŚWay to much hassleâŚSo i said fuck itâŚNow collection agency is trying to collect money & reduce the amount to like $300âŚShould i pay them? Will this affect me financially in the future? My credit score is still pretty good i think it was about 700âŚ
Hereâs a serious finance tip.
SPEND YOUR FUCKING CHANGE. Seriously it took moving out of my parents house to realize how important money really is. I actually take all my change and convert them into quarters
Everyone should know the trick by now: Convert dimes + nickels into quarters by pushing the coin return button on vending machines
I take a bag full of quarters and go buy my necessities (Food/hygiene/and shit) I look retarded putting out stacks of 4 quarters representing a dollar a stack, but Iâm not letting my change pile up on my floor in the room.
Too bad pennies are fucking worthless. Not even Koreans will take em
Excellent post. Couldnât have said it better myself 
Unless you are using your due diligence on each stock, spending all your time researching and getting on investor relation type conference calls with companies, you arenât going to stay âahead of the game.â You need to project what a company is going to do, before they do it. Basically infer information about a company before it goes public⌠THATS how you make your money, and when the market is crashing its the BEST time to do it, because stocks are at their âcheapest.â
Short of insider information, itâs the best way to make money in todayâs markets. And of course, itâs legal, unlike the former 
I donât make much because Iâm in the military. HOWEVER itâs free money, I donât have to worry about housing/food (I donât eat at the dining facility all the time so I do spend some money on food and taxi rides because I canât have a car in Korea)
The only bank I use is Wachovia and I put pretty much put all my money into TSP (Thrift Savings Plan). I shook my head in shame when only a couple people raised their hands when we were asked who is putting some of their money into a retirement/investment account.
What the fuck am I going to be buying anyways? Rather well just throw my money into investments/retirement fund. Thatâs why I basically put my whole paycheck into TSP. I can put up a little over $15k into TSP a year.
Where should I put the rest of the money when I hit the $15k cap? I havenât the slightest clue about stocks/bonds and shit so that stuff flies right over my head.
Iâm nowhere near a finance major, just mainly a computer guy. (My job is Computer System Operations 
)
Get yourself a Roth IRA⌠You can contribute 4k a year now, I think, and you get Compound Intrest on it.
Make sure your TSP is giving you 5%+ on your return. You can easily go to eTrade or AIG or other things like that, and transfer funds into a Savings account with returns up to 5%. It costs nothing to transfer the money in and out, and thereâs no risk as itâs a savings account, not an investment in stocks or anything like that.
If you HAVE the time you can look into investing in a company⌠Up to you - itâs more risky, but then again what are you really doing with your money? It couldnât hurt to throw a few thousand at the big guys⌠WalMart comes to mind, as does any of the big Oil companies.
Itâs a tried and true fact that complete devotion to this mentality will help you lose money faster than you can get it.
To say that the money is no longer there to be made once a good thing is reported is ALSO not entirely true. You have to seriously investigate the type of company you invest in, whether itâs gold, oil, drilling companies or commodities. Or, if you know of a company that is fringes on a certain market that for all intents and purposes will explode upwards, then by all means. Just randomly throwing money into a sinking safe doesnât mean youâre going to get it back. Just ask anyone who has had to deal with the Merck fallout.
This happened to me too. I never paid them, and I ended up moving (not really because of this) and havenât heard anything yet but my credit is gone and itâs all still gaining interest. Once I get shit together Iâll have to just pay it off, and you should too if you care about your credit. I was 18 at the time and only wanted to think about 18 year old kind of shit, and now I canât buy a car or house :sarcastic hi-five:
Stupid.
If a collector is coming after you, pay the bill completely or try to setup a payment plan with them. The WORST thing to do is act like the shit doesnât exist, yea, they might not be calling you, but your credit is going straight to hell. Credit, is actually more important, or on par to how much money you make. If they reduced it to $300, why wouldnât you take it? thats more than 50% less than what you had to pay.
I dont want to take it because its not âmy billâ someone else fuck me over or an actual fraud by SprintâŚWhy should i pay for something i never signed up forâŚThey even got my last name wrong, just my first name & addressâŚLike i said it hasnât affect my credit score too badly which was like 700âŚI already own a house which is paid for, the only thing i see i might need it for is when a buy another house or start a businessâŚDont those collection go away after 7 years? Its already been 4 years since it happenâŚ
If you have the collections coming after you, then doubt it is gone. I think Bankrupt goes away after 7 years, not too sure about collections (hope I never find out either). In any case, I would definitely follow up with Sprint though to make sure its taken care of.
Sorry you ended up in Korea, and this is coming from a Korean soldier:rofl: I hate their stupid nation wide rules and curfews.
Remember, the Korean battle buds(I believe theyâre KATUSA) are the loaded ones, because the rest of Korean folks have to go to their regular army. Iâm very sure that they can get you around, and most of them donât mind because hangin out with USA soldiers are âthe cool thingâ to do.
For TSP, if you arenât the type to check your plan every once a while, itâs best to put it on plan G, because itâs an average interest of all plans.
asking more out of general curiosity than anything, but⌠isnât the interest rate in Japan something like 0.5%?
so what stops someone from borrowing from Japan, investing in a country with 7-8% (e.g. Australia) and reaping hella dosh?
my thinkingâs a bit muddled atm but iâm guessing itâs combination of:
- not everyone can set up a bank account in those places easily, or have the money to make it worthwhile, and
- the exchange rate moves to offset your gains.
I think itâs called the Yen carry trade.
Well it is great that the thread back and moving pretty strong again. It needs to stay that way.