Actually you are wrong. I know plenty of people that criticize the Chinese policy you are speaking of.

No, you get educated and learn about how women communicate.
I highly believe it is unfair.”

If you’re in a relationship, you should make a concerted effort to communicate with your partner in a way he or she understands. If you’re not willing to do that – if you’re requiring your partner to have to do research to communicate with you – you don’t respect your partner much at all.

“Gals, you should not drop hints but be direct with your guy”

what you are really saying is – “women, do not continue to COMMUNICATE in YOUR way, but adopt to THE MEN’s way, OUR way.”

No, you get educated and learn about how women communicate.
I highly believe it is unfair.

Perhaps more pressingly, if you don’t have a credit card, and you need to rent a car in an emergency, you are out of luck unless you can pay for the car in cash. If you need to fly to the bedside of an ill or dying parent or family member on short notice, it is way too late to apply for that credit card.

If you are afraid that you will go on a charging spree, put the card in a glass of water in the freezer. Somehow, I don’t think that will be an issue with you, though.

As a supplement to writing every day, another good way to improve your writing is to read more. The more written language you are exposed to, the more you get a feel for what “good” writing is and how it is constructed. Find authors with writing styles you really enjoy and immerse yourself. You will be amazed at how much this will help you.

Thanks, Julie

I also went to a private school. I had the opportunity too because my father taught there. I do think that Mary was giving out plenty of stereotypes about public schools. There are two sides to the coin and everyone will have different experiences regardless of which school they went too.
I don’t have much experience with the rules of public school, however all private schools in my area had swift and harsh punishments for breaking the rules. There were no three strikes, it was usually one for major offenses (drugs, alcohol, sexual contact). Each student actually had to sign a contract each year stating they would abide by the rules for the entire school year both at school and in their personal lives. I think that this was a great deterrent against making poor decisions as a teenager. I do know that we had very few of the problems that other schools in our area had. I’m not speaking out against public schools, just offering my experiences of attending a private school.

I’m also willing to bet money that those private school kids are still thinking about sex. They aren’t magically shielded from being teenagers by the tuition fee.

And about the relationships thing, when the woman is DONE and the guy is trying to hang on. I so wish more men got this point that a women’s reproduction time is limited.

I’m 35 and my husband is a few years younger. We have a mountain of credit card debt ($35k @ 7.75-10%), student loans ($100k @ 4.25-5% fixed). I have about $60k in a retirement plan at work (I am contributing up to the match, which is a whopping $40 a month from my employer); my husband has no retirement plan at the moment.

Thanks to the advice on your wonderful blog and others, we’ve managed to create a snowball of about $300/mo. above our minimum payments on our credit cards. Our projections are that we will pay off our cc debt in 2011, all else being equal. I will be pushing 40 (*gasp*) at that time. If we take the snowball that exists when the last card is paid off and put it toward our student loans, I’ll be something like 45 at that point when those are gone.

My husband and I have agreed that getting out of debt is our number one priority. But now that we’ve done the math on paying it off and we’re looking at such a long time line, and given the discussions here and elsewhere about the value of time when it comes to compounding interest, I’m wondering if we wouldn’t be better off putting the snowball into 401ks and/or opening up Roths, and just paying the minimums on the cards (and freezing the payments at those amounts). Waiting until we’re nearly 40 (at the earliest) to start saving for retirement in earnest seems like a squandering of valuable time that we just can’t get back. The answer seems trickier to me than a simple comparison of interest earned on an increasing balance in a retirement account vs. interest accruing on a declining balance on the cards, because there’s the element of time thrown in.

So here’s my question: is it ALWAYS the best idea to pay down consumer debt at the expense of funding a retirement account? What good does it do to free up a couple hundred dollars a month (or even $1000 a month) if you have nothing in the bank for a retirement that’s 15-25 years away and you’ve lost a lot of the opportunity to take advantage of that compounding interest?

Thank you so much for opening the floor to our questions!

This advice is good, but leaves out a few important points. First, unless the money goes in a tax-advantaged retirement account, investment income is *always* taxed, while student loan interest is not always deductible. If you have a high income and put the money in a high-yield savings account while paying the minimums on your student loan, you’re hit with a double-whammy: your student loan interest is not deductible (because you make too much), but the interest on your savings account is taxed at a higher marginal rate.

As an example, if your savings account has a 4% APR (pretty good these days) and your marginal tax rate is 28%, your effective after-tax savings rate is only 2.88%. You’d be better off paying the 3% student loan.

IMO, you’d also be better off for cash flow reasons. The fewer debts you have, the more able you are to quit that high-paying, soul-sucking job and follow your calling. :) Other people will disagree and say liquidity is more important.

Thanks for the reassurance in regards to trying to stay away from credit. The idea of taking out a loan, only to pay it back over time, as others have suggested, seems like I am playing a game that, frankly, I don’t really want to play. If I was going to do that, why not take out an unsecured loan, and immediately pay that back the next day, repeat a few times, raising my credit score each time? It doesn’t make sense to me why thats a good idea. I just think too many people that make money from lending have told people for too long to build up their credit score just so they can borrow money.

I have paid my rent, utilities, etc. early or on time each month, never missing a payment. I realize that this is good but I don’t understand how it helps my credit score. From what I understand, your credit score is only made up of a composition of debt (how long you have used debt, what type of debt, amount of debt you have, and how well you pay it back). Granted, you can ding your credit score if you miss a payment that you have committed to, but if your score is only built up by taking out debt, how can anything else affect your score? If I have never borrowed any money, how can I even have a credit score, let alone a good/bad one? I’ve tried pulling my credit report, and it basically says that it doesn’t have enough data to accurately judge my credit score.

Finally, I figure that if I am able to have a 30% down payment, with good income and good payment history on utilities and no debt, most lenders would be crazy not to lend me money for a house. That may just be someone looking into the thought process of lending, as opposed to accepting that a FICO score needs to be high because people tell me so.