In Focus Consumer Credit Game change
How might a child conceive of the world of credit and fraud?
Arthur Kaufman Independent writer and speaker
arthur35art@hotmail.co.uk
Let us play banks today. I will be the boss of the bank and Joe here can be my helper boss. Little Sue will cut out pretty looking plastic cards the rest of you can use instead of all that paper and coins we bankers are trying to get rid of. And Tom here, who is good at fixing
things, will fill in more of those holes in the wall where money used to come from when we needed it. My Dad says that it is silly to make
everybody make do with plastic cards and smartphones whenever we want to buy something, or just pay back what we owe to a bank or to big companies who lend us money we cannot even see or touch, which they call credit, that we can ask for and get right away by just tapping on the right keys.
This credit thing is invisible like ghosts
and goes through the air really fast, the same as when we text or send pictures to each other. Even big countries use it, but, like people, they have to have to pay back more, and a lot more than what they got when they first asked for it. Dad says that this ‘more’ stuff is what
they called interest, which, like credit, we cannot see or touch either, even though we can be charged for it until we paid back all that we borrowed. But if a person has money they do not
use and puts it in a bank instead, then the bank will pay them back more than what they put in, although it would be a lot less than what the bank would charge them in interest if they borrowed money on credit.
Dad says that this ‘more’ stuff is what they called interest, which, like credit, we cannot see or touch either, even though we can be charged for it until we paid back all that we borrowed
So, interest could be good if you were in
credit, but really good for a bank or a big company that let you spend whatever you wanted on credit whenever you wanted to, and then make you pay back tons more, which could go on for a long time. Sounds stupid to me, but our Mums and
Dads do strange things they tell us not to do. Would it not be funny if we spent all our Saturday's spending money as soon as we got it, and then had to ask for more before next Saturday, and then be charged credit on the extra bit if we did not pay it back right away. Maybe if we did not get our spending
money every week, we could charge our parents interest when we finally got it? That would be great if we did not mind waiting for it! My Uncle Joe works for a bank that lets
people have money on credit, so they can buy things whenever they feel like it, without having to save up enough for what they want right away. I heard him say that if they did not pay
back on time what they owed, then they might not be able to buy any more on credit. But, if they did get
February 2020
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