Dumb Thoughts - Credit Cards

Corky,

A couple of cautions.  If a nationwide crisis occurs, the wheels of justice and finance may get gummed up a bit, but they will still turn.  This isn't likely to be TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it)  and those bills will eventually come due.  Be careful about getting in over your head in debt - a Bird Flu pandemic is a possibility, but that Visa or MasterCard bill is an eventual certainty.

As for last minute buying sprees, what do you think the oblivious masses will be doing?  If you wait until a BF pandemic is an iminent certainty, you will be fighting hordes of fellow procrastinators for the last bottle of Evian, the last roll of TP, and the last can of artichoke hearts in the store. Come on, you're smarter than that friend.  Anyone who follows disaster coverage of any major event (such as any hurricane in the last 20 years) knows this always happens on the eve of any impending crisis.  Heck, I've even seen accounts of this sort of panic buying as far back as 1962, the Cuban Missile crisis.  It's a fact of modern life, take note and act accordingly.

I see things as a matter of timing and judgment, how bad you think things will get how fast.  I don't propose to use the credit cards for buying things you must have, just things you would like, things others won't be thinking of.  I see things like payments and rent getting put on hold for quite a while as the economy spins down, national emergency plan actually calls for that.  Money will take a long time to comeback in the credit area.

Some of the things on my last minute list are:

hitting a local casino and getting the cash I can with one of the cards.

extra 6v batteries, maybe four or six

small chain saw

extra booze, cigs and chocolate for trade goods

low power LCD monitors and/or T.V.s

The object is to be prepared and use the extra time your forethought and vision buy you to make life easier and more pleasant at the banks expense.  If you don't see the banking and credit systems crashing, the distribution network grinding to a halt and society in general spinning down with a bad case of the flu, what are you doing here.

Sophia,

If this site is necessary then the economic system will be shot to He!! and bills, mortgages, etc aren't going to mean much if you live.  This isn't an event that will leave things untouched, with a pop back to normal in a few months, if it is then we are all wasting our time!  The dislocation if this site is necessary will be severe enough that going bankrupt will be the norm not unusual.  What would you rather have, the goods and written off bills or the suffering?  I'd rather be alive with bad credit than dead with perfect credit! 

Attitude adjustment is part of what a site like this is about.  Making a half hearted bet isn't going to do you much good, seeing the changes in the game ahead of time will make you a living winner.  Being able to max-out the credit at the last minute might just buy you the edge you need.  While others are panicking for food I'll be out getting the goodies they will wish they'd thought of a month later.  Once it starts credit will be just so many electrons floating in space, get what you can before it's all canceled.

Are you counting on the bank to be open and give you your money a month into this?  Their rules in reverse, Flu cancels all debts.

Marjo,

I don't need the power grid to use the things and boredom is a big mind killer.  You seem a bit divided on what's going to happen, maybe you should think things out a bit more.  Dunning only works if they can get ahold of you and you worry about what your credit rating is.  I'd rather loot with a credit card than a crowbar,  much safer and easier.   I don't see much need to sweat my credit rating if Avian Flu hits.  You're still thinking in a civilized manner, something that can have lethal side effects.

Going broke small or large isn't much difference, not Mad Max style, simple mass unemployment and economic down turn will make a large share of the populace go broke.  If you stay home to ride out the flu and don't work or the business you work for dies and you can't get another job you go broke when the money runs out.  Again this isn't a single point disaster, it will be a long term rolling thing dropping all boats to a lower level.  If you lose your home for nonpayment of the mortgage or rent how important would the credit card bills be?

Post WWII you had help coming in from outside, the Marshall Plan and many places in the world where the War hadn't toughed to any great degree.  Also the world wasn't the flat just in time place it is today, with it's many single source products.  There won't be many if any places post AP that are untouched.

What I see is a world in a depression trying to figure out how to restart, a world where everything must be done before anything can be done, so to speak.  The bootstrap loader will have to be hand loaded so to speak, a slow and painful process.  Ever see an old style computer with lots of switches on the front, you set the address and data to be loaded by hand, once loaded with data you could load a paper tape which then loaded the first track off the hard drive.  A slow and painful job.

Cupcake,

I'm of a similar school of thought.  Although I HIGHLY DOUBT that Avian Influenza will plunge us into a Dark Age/Mad Max sort of scenario, I do think there is likely to be large scale economic disruption.  Many of us will be without jobs which will limit spending which will limit the speed of the recovery.  I don't want to have to declare bankrupcy because the bills came due and I couldn't pay them.  If the Bird Flu turns out to be a wet firecracker, I don't want to be stuck with a bunch of expensive exotic gear that never got used and ruined credit.  I'm paying down all my available debt, while diverting most of my disposable income into preps.  After the preps are laid in, I will lay in a supply of cash - which may end up worthless in a worst case scenario, but may also end up comming in very handy.

Everyone has their own strategy for coping with a situation that none of us has ever experienced before, whose scope and severity will remain unknown until we have the benefit of hindsight.  It's good to discuss all the options, hash out the possibilities, weigh consequences.   The important thing is that this event has gotten us talking and thinking about being responsible for our own future well-being, and that puts all of us well ahead of the unseeing masses.