These numbers should help the Consumer Debt Clock to continue to go down.  How much more can we, as a nation, continue to drive the clock down?

For more info on the Federal Reserve’s numbers, click here.

To add the Consumer Debt Clock to your blog/website, click here.

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Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

Below are some clips from that radio interview.

To hear the full audio interview and radio show, please click here.

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Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

On September 17th, the Federal Reserve released its latest findings on Consumer Debt Outstanding.  In reflection of good personal choices, personal debt went down by 1.7% for the second quarter 2009.  This is amazing because it brings the total personal national debt down to just under $13.7 trillion.  Also, for the first time ever, personal debt did not grow for the fourth quarter in a row.  This decrease was due to a 1.4% drop in household home mortgage debt AND a 6.5% drop in consumer credit.

Maybe we can interpret that as people are starting to turn away from using loans and credit cards and are starting to pay off their debts and earning their freedom.  This is great news!  Since debt is going down, BeatingDebt.org updated the scripts on the Consumer Debt Clock to continue counting down.  Isn’t that wonderful?!

Check out the Consumer Debt Clock that is going down in value and feel free to add it to your website to encourage others to help decrease our consumer debt addiction.

Can we keep up the trend of the clock going down for another quarter?

Can we help it along by paying off our personal debt?

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Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

The Financial Conservative

Beating debt is very difficult because all for-profit companies are very persuasive in convincing families to part with their money, no matter the cost it incurs to the family.  This is a revolution because we are trying to overthrow convincing marketing tactics.  We will not be bound to our credit cards and loans.  Instead, we choose to live a life free from debt and are working together to succeed.

To join the alliance of members that are committed to beating debt, please go to our alliance page.

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Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

These numbers should help the Consumer Debt Clock to continue to go down.  How much more can we, as a nation, continue to drive the clock down?

Does this mean that our educational ads are working?

For more info on the Federal Reserve’s numbers, click here.

To add the Consumer Debt Clock to your blog/website, click here.

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Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

It is hard to imagine a sober and active Presbyterian industrialist as a major contributor to today’s credit morass. Yet McCormick was.

When Cyrus McCormick invented the first successful reaper in 1832, inventions were not a path to success. There was no market for his machines. Farmhands opposed it, thinking it would rob them of jobs. America’s farmers were skeptical; after all, most could not even be induced to replace their wooden plows with iron. Rivals, however, saw the reaper’s potential and stole McCormick’s ideas. If he was to profit from his hard work, he had to create a market and outsmart his competitors.

Outsmart them he did. As biographer Herbert Casson remarked, “Cyrus Hall McCormick invented the reaper. He did more—he invented the business of making reapers and selling them to the farmers of America and foreign countries.”

McCormick moved from his native Virginia to a swamp called Chicago, which he saw as a natural distribution point. He developed a factory with assembly lines. He advertised. He created franchises and stocked them with machines ready for farmers to buy. He sold his reapers at published prices with written guarantees. All of these were cutting edge business practices.

And he sold on credit.

McCormick was the first industrialist to do so on a wide scale. If ever payment plans seemed justified, it was in this instance. For most farmers, coming up with the $100 asking price was like finding $25,000-$45,000 in ready cash today—they couldn’t just walk into a local bank and borrow it. Try making that kind of money on the earnings of five acres of wheat mowed by hand—about all that the average farm could harvest during the seven to ten days between wheat ripening and spoiling. With one of Cyrus’ machines, however, a farmer could reap six acres in a day, forty to sixty in a season. With more wheat to sell and less wages to pay, the careful farmer could soon earn enough to pay off his purchase.

Contemporaries were shocked that McCormick would trust strangers to repay him. They predicted financial disaster, but his trust was vindicated; very few farmers defaulted on their payments. McCormick, the farmers, and the nation prospered. The United States became a major exporter of wheat.

Cyrus McCormick, a stout Christian and philanthropist, sponsor of a national religious magazine and founder of a Presbyterian seminary, had no intention of doing harm when he developed and promoted easy payment plans. But they became an alluring quicksand in a nation that, with the rise of prosperity, threw off restraint and used them to finance not just essential equipment, but even pleasure goods.

Sources:

Casson, Herbert Newton. Cyrus Hall McCormick, His Life and Work. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1909. 

de Camp, L. Sprague. The Heroic Age of American Invention. New York: Doubleday, 1961.

National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Volume V. New York: James T. White & Company, 1894.

National Geographic Special Publications Division. Those Innovative Americans. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1971.

“Six Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to Present.” http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ (Accessed August 31, 2009.)

Thwaites, Reuben Gold. Cyrus Hall McCormick and the Reaper. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1909.

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Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

Here are the articles, I used for this week’s show.

Skyrocketing Consumer Debt by Keith Vance

Students not following national credit card use trends by Jeffrey Saulton

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Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

“A lot of people buy into the concept that paying the minimum balance is OK and whatever they want they should put on the credit card,” she said. “Consumers need to take responsibility, too. It’s a two-way street.”

This article does a great job in balancing the new Credit Card reform legislation with our continuing need for personal responsibility.  I agree there are many marketers and corporations that use subtle and even blatant techniques to convince us to buy, buy, buy that should be reformed.  However, no government will be able to protect all people from all things.  There needs to be some level of education, responsibility, and discipline that must be found within ourselves to say “No!” to the many advertisements we see on TV, radio, and the internet.  During the “greatest economic downturn, since the Great Depression“, many people are trying to use our frustration, hesitation, and fear to manipulate us to MAKE MONEY and wield power.  Be on your guard and stick with your current plan to beat debt to make a successful financial marathon.

For more on this article, please click here.

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Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

These numbers should help the Consumer Debt Clock to continue to go down.  How much more can we, as a nation, continue to drive the clock down?

For more info on the Federal Reserve’s numbers, click here.

To add the Consumer Debt Clock to your blog/website, click here.

~~~~~~~~

Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts

These numbers should help the Consumer Debt Clock to continue to go down.  How much more can we, as a nation, continue to drive the clock down?

For more info on the Federal Reserve’s numbers, click here.

To add the Consumer Debt Clock to your blog/website, click here.

~~~~~~~~

Volunteer or Donate to Help Convince More People To Stay Away From Debt.

Show others how much you’ve beaten debt
for the price of one latte a year. – – Beating Debt Charts