Church Voices

This is another installment in my series on why and how Christians should be bad consumers.

While on a weekend get away I managed to watch some cable TV, which means that I managed to also watch some commercials. This one included.

Yep, another website trying to scam money for a service that’s already free. If you need excellent credit then it makes sense to worry about your credit report. The thing is, for most of us, it doesn’t really matter all that much, or if we just ignored it we’d be better off. Credit only matters if you’re planning on borrowing large sums of money. Sure, if you want to borrow money to start a small business, or buy a house, then by all means pay close attention and clean up your credit.

But, take for example this person who wrote to the consumerist to ask if it was worth it to close a credit card in exchange for a lower interest rate. She notes they have a lot of debt and this particular card won’t be paid off for five years. Her concern with closing the account is how it will affect her credit score.

In her case, who cares? If you’ve got so much debt you can’t pay off this card for a few years your credit score shouldn’t matter to you. You shouldn’t be looking to borrow more money, you should be looking to pay off debt. In fact, this particular person would probably be better served to stop paying completely, negotiate a settlement to pay off at a lower amount. Sure your credit report will get all frowny for a few years, but in the long run, you’re better off.

For some reason credit bureaus have convinced many Americans that credit scores matter, and so they have more power, and higher revenue. The reality is, that for most people, credit scores matter very little, and in fact credit in general does a lot of damage to lives.

Be a bad consumer and don’t worry about your credit score unless you need to borrow money, and if you need to borrow money every month to get by, its time to make some changes.

Be A Bad Consumer is my series on using the resources God gave us in a proper way. Here’s part 1, and here’s all of them.

Like many people on the interwebs your intrepid host has a number of pet peeves that is guaranteed to make his head explode like a kernel of microwave popcorn. One of those is the long con.

The long con isn’t just an episode of Lost, though it is that, it is also a genre of con in which the conman gives up something early on to the mark in order to gain their trust so that they can fleece the victim in a much larger way some time down the line.

Businesses do the same thing. Of course, its not a con in the moral and legal sense of the word, but it is a con in that you’re getting a much worse deal for much longer. Corporations have, for some time now, focused on getting their customers to spend more on a monthly basis, rather than one big lump sum purchase that happens once every few years. Let me give you a hygienic example.

For years I shaved with whatever cheap disposable razors I could find. Then Gillette started sending out coupons that greatly reduced the price of their Mach 3 razors. Sweet deal, right? The only problem is that while I could buy the razor for two or three dollars it came with only one cartridge and once that ran out it was time to pony up for replacement blades. Of course the replacement razor blades come at a steep price, more than $4 per razor cartridge, twice what I had paid for a cartridge with the blade. But, what are you going to do? Gillette is the only source, that I know of, for replacements so you have to pay whatever they want to charge.

Naturally, things didn’t always work this way. Gillette has been around for years and the business model was at one time very different. Years ago the shaver cost a lot and the blades almost nothing. And while this sort of consuming is in the minority, you can still do it this way.

For example, a standard safety razor will cost you $30, and the razors I buy for this sort of product cost $1.72 for 10. That’s less than two cents per razor. And it does a great job, if you combine it with a decent shaving brush (cost $30) and some soap. So a consumer using this model will end up spending $60 for at least a decade of use, and then $.02 per day (unless you’re a scruffy ruffian like yours truly and shave only twice a week, then its $.04 per week). That means a decade of daily shaves costs a man $70.30 (plus soap), while a decade of using one of Gillette’s Mach 3, or Fusion (if you’re willing to make a cartridge last two weeks) costs a man $960 (plus shaving cream), more than thirteen times more. Even at $2.79 per cartridge (the price you can get if you’re willing to order through Amazon and drop $67 to buy 24 at once) the cost is still $670.

And that’s the long con. Gillette will get you started for just a few dollars, but in return they get much more of your money over the long haul and they get a steady stream of income, instead of a large lump sum up front and then almost nothing. And its worked. Gillette’s customers have willingly bought into this business model, so much so, that you have to shop online for safety shavers and brushes.

Be a bad consumer, look out of the long con.

I came across this interview with the author of a new book called Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America. One thing that jumped out at me is the changing moral view of lending money. Check out these two questions the author fields.

You actually assign a lot of blame for our recent troubles on a lack of interest rate caps—that is, on the absence of strict usury laws. Why?
Almost every state had usury laws in the 1920s, and they were circumvented one by one. Prohibitions against excessive interest started to disappear [South Dakota, for instance, loosened its laws in 1980,] and once they did, the credit-card companies recognized a wonderful opportunity. They could charge as much as the market would bear, claiming that they had to charge more for bad credit risks. You can argue that’s the democratization of credit, but it’s in the interest of credit-card companies to keep people under the yoke. We’ve just swapped loan sharks for legitimate loan sharks.

So maybe there are some people who just shouldn’t have access to credit?
I think everyone should have access to credit in a very strict proportion to their income—not a future projection of their income, which is what we’ve been doing. It’s been, “I’m now making $50,000 but in a few years I’ll be making $150,000, so no big deal, let’s go buy an expensive house now.” This whole business of giving more credit than a person can service is not only foolish, but if you tried to do that 200 or 300 years ago, it would have been considered immoral as well. We don’t think that way anymore, but essentially it is, because that person is going to be in debt forever.

I’ve written before about scriptural admonitions about usury. Early church leaders were vehement in their attacks on lending money with interest. The church has been remarkably silent on the issue in the last 100 years. It might be time for a renewed interest in this area.

While perusing Woot one day I noticed they had for sale a 52″ HD TV. Now, it was a little expensive for my blood, but I thought, what the heck, lets see what people have to say about this product, you know, just in case.

And this comment in particular tickled our collective funny bone.

This is great. A gigantic screen that you can hang on your wall high enough so that all who drive by your house can see what you are watching. You can see millionaires in funny costumes chase a ball around. Or amateur singers trying to win a contrived contest designed to get tv networks to gain more revenue for the commercials they sell. Or video of the latest murder in your neighborhood, described by a silly girl. Great.

You know, when you put it like that, maybe we’ll wait a bit.

Part 1 of Be A Bad Consumer

This article about a man who gave up using money entirely in 2000. He recounts an experience in the Peace Corps that changed his perspective.

But what good would it do for me to be a sadhu in India? A true test of faith would be to return to one of the most materialistic, money-worshipping nations on earth and be a sadhu there. To be a vagabond in America, a bum, and make an art of it—the idea enchanted me.

While I disagree with the cure Daniel Suelo has found for himself (especially since its an unsustainable lifestyle if everyone were to do it), I do admire his ability to diagnose the disease. If you live in the United States you live in a place that worships money. At times, we punish white collar crime more severely than murder. The sheer dollar figures of contracts for athletes are enough to make news stories, the take for the opening weekend of a movie is news for the masses, and the opulence of celebrity lifestyle is itself entertainment.

There’s a lot of concern within the church about gay marriage, who’s elected to high office, and abortion, and certainly there’s a lot of scripture that deals with those issues. But, there’s also a lot of scripture dealing with how we view money. One in particular I want to bring to mind.

The first is in Luke 12, where Jesus tells us about a farmer who has a windfall harvest. He reasons to himself:

Then he said, ‘I know! I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll have room enough to store all my wheat and other goods. And I’ll sit back and say to myself, “My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!”’

The problem is that the farmer has miscalculated what his harvest is worth.

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get everything you worked for?’“Yes, a person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God.”

A good friend of mine told me once, “the more crap you buy, the more people die”. That may put a little too fine of a point on it, but the general idea is true. The more money you spend on useless crap, the less money you have to spend on the kingdom of God. Lets put aside the obvious observation that the money you save by buying a used car instead of a new one could be put to use in helping the poor, or some other advancement of the kingdom.

Instead, lets focus on a much more pervasive problem: debt. Many people carry a lot of debt. The reality is that if you carry so much debt that you have to take a high paying job in order to service it, then you’re not going to be able to take a position that might be your dream job.

Its no secret I enjoy the writing of Michael Spencer. In some ways I’m jealous of his life. Oh, not the internet superstardom, or the book deal he recently scored. I mean the obvious fulfillment he has in the work he does. The thing is that the job he has doesn’t pay a whole lot. He works as a teacher and minister at a private boarding school in an impoverished area. They get by on the generosity of their donors. In fact, most of the schools like his have gone under leaving only three left in the entire nation (if I remember correctly). As a result everything is done as frugally as possible. Including paying staff. Most of the staff at his school are there because, like Michael, they have a passion for the work. The thing is, if Michael had to pay on a large amount of debt, he’d be stuck in conventional ministry where the pay is better. Not that that’s a terrible thing, but its not what he’s doing now, which he obviously loves and as a result has blessed those of us who read his writing.

As followers of Jesus we are called not just into any place, but every place. Places where a conventional ministry can’t reach, places where a $50,000/year salary just won’t happen.

If you need $50k/year to pay on your debt then you won’t be doing the following:
Church planting of any kind
Long term mission work of any kind
Missional living in an impoverished area
Taking a ministry position in anything but conventional ministries
Care for a disabled parent or child

Be a bad consumer and put off or scale back purchases as part of living in the kingdom of God, and ultimately, most of the crap corporations and businesses want to sell us end up gathering dust or in the trash anyway.