vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Then we do agree in a sense. Pensions are an anathema in the modern economy and likely were never a good idea, that said I do not agree with putting those owed and promised pensions behind other creditors. You would not bring down the credit system, you would simply kill what is left of the seriously broken pensions system and punish any company that was fool enough to play games with their pension system.   All that said I am not against a bankruptcy court discharging pensions and saying tough-titties to the employees. I just want that consideration by the court to happen when whatever is left of the cash pile is still big enough to matter to the pensioners.  If you are a company dumb enough to operate such a system today I see no reason why your creditors should not be aware of the promised debt load you carry that is bound up in your employees and take it into account. Does it make credit more expensive for them? It better!
I am not a structured products expert, just relaying what's in the article, but I'd imagine it includes a larger equity tranche in the structured product, thereby giving more cushion against losses to the actual debt investors in the tranches above it in the payment water fall.
"The day I paid my last student loan payment and my last car payment was (January 4, 2000) a very happy day for me, being then 100% debt free.  It is a very good feeling, especially since I was saving cash as well.  It's a great thing to know that no-one ""owns"" you. Many others here have provided useful information about debt, and I know that paying off your existing loans will improve your credit rating, in case you want to go back into debt (which I did later in 2000, by buying a house). For most people, borrowing money to invest it is complicated (make sure you're not paying more on your borrowed $ than you make on your investment) due to the fact that most investments have risk involved. I would say that being debt-free is a very good goal, and there's a level of freedom it gives you.  Just make sure you have your ""rainy day"" fund building while you're on your way to getting there."
"If you're going into a field that is both in demand and pays well, then yes, it's worth going into debt for college.  That said, it's also usually worth *minimizing* how much debt you take on.  Unless you're going into a field where ""Harvard"" is all but a requirement to get your foot in the door, there's virtually no difference between *that* and your local state university, 99% of the time.  If, however, you have no idea what you want to do and are going to college just because everyone says you should - Then no, you *shouldn't*, unless someone else is paying for it (and even then, don't arbitrarily put your parents in the poorhouse just because they'll sign on the bottom line)."
If you have both consumer debt and IRS debt, you can file Chapter 7 bankruptcy to get rid of all of it. The trick is your taxes have to be at least 3 years old from the due date in order to be considered for bankruptcy. So newer taxes, like 2010 and on, can't be discharged yet (and earlier ones may not be yet, there are rules which toll the time) You'll definitely want to talk to a bankruptcy attorney in your area who focusing on discharge in tax debts. You may be able to kill two birds with one stone.  My other concern is are you current? Typically people routinely run up a new debt when trying to settle up on 9old debt. So the OIC route may be a waste of your time. Also, $6000 isn't a lot of money, so there's not a lot of room to negotiate down. It's all how you fill out the 656-OIC. I've seen way to many people not fill it out incorrectly.  The IRS has a limited amount of time to collect on a debt, so if there are old taxes, you may be better off getting into CNC status, which it seems like you would qualify for and let the debt expire on your own. That may be another viable solution. Unfortunately, this is really complicated to get the best result. And good tax debt attorneys fees start at the amount of taxes you owe! So that's not really cost effective to hire one.
For example, we have no TV service (internet only service redirected an additional $100/mo to the wifes lone credit card) and we used '12 taxes to pay off the last 4k on the car. We did the same thing on our van last year. It takes willpower to not cheat, but that's only really necessary for the first year-ish... well before that point you'll be used to the Atkins Diet on your wallet and will have no desire to cheat. It doesn't really hurt your quality of life (do you really NEED 5 HBO channels?) and it sets everyone up for success down the line. The moral of the story is that by paying down your debt today, you're taking steps to reduce long haul expenditures. A stable household economy is a tremendous foundation for raising children and can set you up to be more able to deal with the costs of higher ed.
Financially, it simply doesn't make sense to go into debt here. It may be that living on credit cards for a while gives you a chance to recover psychologically, but financially, it doesn't make sense. But, let's consider the larger picture here. You are unmotivated and directionless, and may be suffering from depression. That sucks; very many of us have been there. I'd write in great detail, except this site is about finance, so let's limit the scope a little. You've had therapy. It hasn't produced meaningful change. Stop with that therapy; it's not cost-effective. Financially speaking, your goal should be to get back on your feet. You should only be willing to take on credit card debt if it is very, very directly helping you accomplish this. Maybe that means a different therapist. Maybe that means paying for medication, which can often be breathtakingly effective. Heck, maybe that's a suit, something you put on each morning for a couple of hours to focus on getting a job. Maybe that means some other approach. But you should only be willing to take on debt that directly helps you get back on your feet. Should you be willing to continue as you are now, taking on credit card debt for your living expenses? No, definitely not. Credit cards charge obscene amounts of interest, and the evidence is that your current approach is not working. Going into debt in this case makes as much sense as it did for me to continue working for an employer who wasn't paying me. That is, none at all (financially). All that said, I strongly encourage you to get whatever help will work for you. Your finances are important, but they aren't everything.
I would use student loans and avoid credit card debt if debt is your only option.   Here are the advantages I see:   Disadvantages:
I'd say its time to merge finances!
The latter. Simply because having some savings is always better than having no savings. Using a credit card in an emergency will always be an option (as long as you are paying off debt) but using savings earmarked for emergencies is better.
A Simple Rule to discern between good and bad debt: Does this mean you should never buy a house or car? Of course not.  But if you accrue bad debt, make sure that you can handle it and understand the costs and repercussions.
The other answers assumed student loan debt -- and for that, it's rarely worth it (unless your company only offers managed plans w/ really bad returns, or the economy recovers to the point where banks are paying 5% again on money market accounts) ... but if it's high rate debt, such as carrying a credit card debt, and the current rate of returns on the 401k aren't that great at the time, it would be worth doing the calculations to see if it's better to pay them down instead. If you're carrying extremely high interest debt (such as 'payday loans' or similar), it's almost always going to be worth paying down that debt as quickly as possible, even if it means forgoing matching 401k payments. The other possible reason for not taking the matching funds are if the required contributions would put you in a significant bind -- if you're barely scraping by, and you can't squeeze enough savings out of your budget that you'd risk default on a loan (eg, car or house) or might take penalties for late fees on your utilities, it might be preferable to save up for a bit before starting the contributions -- especially if you've maxed your available credit so you can't just push stuff to credit cards as a last resort.
I don't know much about the convertible debt space, but it seems like this regulation may be a positive sign that the government is being proactive in preventing financial institutions from developing overly complex debt structures (at least on an on-going basis) that get the global economy back into trouble.  Does anyone with a more informed opinion than my own have something to share?
"Balance transfer is a specific type of transactions where you use card X to pay off card Y. Assume you have a credit card Y with $1000 current balance. You open a new credit card X, and use the newly approved credit to pay off the balance on Y. You'll pay $30 fee (3% of the balance you're transferring). This doesn't apply to transfers from your checking/savings to the credit card to pay off the balance on that credit card. ""Balance Transfer"" is when you use credit limit of card X to pay off existing balance of card Y, nothing else."
A balance transfer is paying one debt instrument with another.  While this is typically seen in credit card offers it isn't necessarily confined to credit cards. Obviously the only reason to do this is refinancing debt to a lower interest rate.  You need to watch for loads on the incoming money, there may be an upwards of 5% fee.  This calculation is materially different than your APR.  Monthly interest charges can be estimated by taking your APR divided by 12 times your balance.  So a 15% APR will have a rough monthly interest charge of 1.25%.  The 5% balance transfer fee is 4x your normal interest charge.  That fee is added to your balance and now you pay interest on the whole amount.  You need to ensure the new rate is low enough to actually benefit you after the incoming fee.
From my knowledge, credit card balance cannot be transfered like that. On the other hand, debit card balance can. All banks have an online portal where you can log in and see all of your accounts. (Another options is to call or go to the bank and go through the same process) To transfer to banks in other countries, you need both their account details (Person's Name, Account Number) and the bank's international identifiers (Exact Name, Swift Number). If you have that information, you can simply transfer the money and then your parents (or you) can use it to pay the debt. Another option would be to assign yourself as the Debt payer (if the bank allows it) and other options would be simple money lending services like, for example, Western Union. Also, be sure that your bank will know ALL the possible ways you could proceed. Hope this helps! Robert
"Many people who do transfer a balance from one credit card to another have no clue as to what is going on and how credit cards work. If you transfer a balance from one credit card to another, you are charged a fee of anywhere from 3% upwards (subject to a minimum of $10 or so) up front. If Credit Card A has balance $1000 and you transfer it to Credit Card B which is offering no interest for a year on the transferred balance, you owe Credit Card B $1050 (say). In most cases, that $50 has to be paid off as part of the following month's bill. If you are carrying a revolving balance on Credit Card B, that $50 will typically be charged interest from the day of the transfer. Your monthly bill will not (necessarily) include that $1000 you owe for one year or six months or whatever the transfer agreement you accepted says. If you tend to pay anything less (even a penny) than full payment of each month's bill on Credit Card B, your partial payment will be applied to that $1000 first, and anything left over will be applied to the monthly balance. In short, if you don't pay in full each month, that $1000 will not be ""yours"" for a year; you may end up paying $50 interest for borrowing $1000 for just one or two months, and the rest of your balance is the gift that keeps on giving as the credit card company likes to say. UPDATE: This has changed slightly in the United States. Any amount paid over the minimum amount due is charged to the higher-interest balances. So in this case, if you had $1000 at a 0% promotional rate and a regular balance of $500, and the minimum payment was $100, and you paid $150, $100 would pay down the promotional balance, and the extra $50 would pay down the regular balance. About the only way to make the deal work in your favor is to Transfer money only if you have paid the full amount due on the last two statements before the date of the transfer and are not carrying a revolving balance. Check your monthly statements to make sure they show Finance Charge of 0.00. Many people have never seen such a sight and are unaware that this can be observed in nature.
"I too am a full-monthly-statement-balance payer and I received a balance transfer offer from my credit-card company. This one was quite different from many others that I have read about on this forum. I could do a balance transfer for any amount up to $X from another credit card, or use the enclosed ""checks"" to pay some other (non-credit-card) bills, and I would not have to pay any interest for 12 months on the amount thus borrowed. But, There would be a 2% service charge on the amount I was borrowing. This amount would be billed on the next monthly statement, and it would have to be paid in full by the due date of that month's payment, that is, within the 25-day grace period allowed for payment of monthly statements. Else, interest would start being charged on the unpaid part of the service charge at the usual humongous rate of H% per month. If I had not paid the previous month's balance in full, I would be charged interest at H% per month on the service charge starting from Day One; no free ride till the due date of the next month's statement. Of course, the balance carried over from last month would also be charged interest at H%. If I had paid last month's bill in full, but there were any other charges (purchases) during the current month, then unless the entire amount due, this month's purchases plus service charge and that ""interest-free-for-twelve-months loan"" balance was paid off within the 25-day grace period, my purchases would be deemed unpaid and would start being charged interest. In short, the only way to avoid paying interest on the amount borrowed was to start with a card showing a $0 balance due on the previous month's statement, not make any charges on that card for a whole year, and pay off that 2% service charge within the grace period. It might also have required that one-twelfth of that interest-free loan be repaid each month, but I had stopped reading the offer at this point and filed it in the round circular file.
In this example, in the absence of the balance transfer, the minimum payment would have been $20 = $10 (interest on $1000 at 1% per month) + $10 (1% of balance) and would have left you with $990 due for next month. To be at the same point with the balance transfer offer, you would need to pay $30 more than the minimum payment of $35 due. This extra $30 will pay off the interest and transfer fee ($20) and the rest will be applied to the $1000 balance to reduce it to $990. There would be no balance transfer fee in future months and so the extra that you need to pay will be a little bit smaller etc. If you avoid paying interest charges on credit cards by never taking any cash advances and by paying off the monthly balance (consisting only of purchases made within the past month) in full by the due date, then the only way to avoid paying interest on the purchases made during the month of the balance transfer offer is to pay off that month's statement in full (including the balance just transferred over and the balance transfer fee) by the due date. So, depending on when in the billing cycle the transfer occurs, you are getting a loan of the balance transfer amount for 25 to 55 days and being charged 2% or 3% for the privilege. If you are getting offers of 2% balance transfer fees instead of 3%, you are probably among those who pay their balances in full each month, and the bank is trying to tempt you into doing a balance transfer by offering a lower fee. (It is unlikely that they will make a no-transfer-fee offer.) They would prefer laughing all the way to themselves by collecting a 2% transfer fee from you (and possibly interest too if you fail to read the fine print) than having you decline such offers at 3% as being too expensive. Can you make a balance transfer offer work in your favor? Sure. Don't make any purchases on the card in the month of the balance transfer or during the entire time that the 0% APR is being offered. In the month of the transfer, pay the minimum balance due plus the balance transfer fee. In succeeding months, pay the minimum balance due (typically 1% of the balance owed) each month.
Since you are not paying the full balance off each month you are carrying a balance from month to month. That balance is being charged some interest rate X. With a balance transfer, the new credit card pays off that balance. As a result you now have a balance of the same amount (plus any processing charges) on the new credit card. Hence the balance has transferred from the old to the new. And you now pay the new credit card. Ideally you do this because the new credit card is offering a reduced interest rate, saving you money. Though be warned often that transfer rate is a limited time deal and any left over after the window expires will be charged the higher rate.
I do this all the time with around 5 credit cards (Chase Slate, Bank of America, Capital One, Barclay Card, and Discover). They will all send me balance transfer checks every month with rates ranging from 0% to 5%. Chase has some of the best rates (0-2% for 16 months). BofA has the best APRs, in case I need to keep the balance on for several months after the transfer expires. Generally you don't need to jump through hoops to get the money in your bank account. They will usually either wire it directly or you can just deposit the check. Do make sure you read the fine print on the offer. Most of the time, the offer will show up as a standard balance transfer. Sometimes, they may designate one of the checks as cash advance with much higher rates. Always double check the transfer fee and post-expiration APR. Recently did it with Barclay Card and Bank of America, both at 2% for 12-18months.
This is brilliant for AmEx; they make a cut off of every transaction you do, so even if you pay it off before you ever pay interest, they still may take some.  Balance transfers, on the other hand, generally have a transfer fee that locks in a percent, depending on the offer. For your own sake, it can be a good deal if you   Considering that they make some money, it makes sense why they offer people this - merchants, as you'll read from Nerd Wallet, are paying extra to use credit cards.
"The short answer is: it depends. The longer answer is that balance transfers are tricky, and often a bait-and-switch; they'll offer 0% interest, but charge a 3-4% ""fee"" (which isn't interest and is perfectly legal) on the amount transferred. If you transfer $5000, you now owe the new card company $5,200. Now, that could be fine with you; at an 18-20% APR on your old card you may have been charged that much in just one or two months, and by capitalizing this fee up front you lock in 0% for a year. However, there are other possible machinations behind the scenes. For instance, you may incur retroactive interest on the full balance if not paid off in the year (at 20% APR on $5000, that's an extra grand you will owe if there's even one dollar of the original transferred balance left in the account). Paying off the balance and thus avoiding these penalties has actually been made harder by the CARD Act, which required creditors to apply any payment made to the highest-interest portion of the balance first. As balance transfers are 0% they are the last on the list, so if you transfer a balance and then carry an additional balance you are setting yourself up for failure. You MUST have a zero-dollar balance for one month sometime during the year in order to be sure the balance transfer is paid off and no penalties will be incurred. That can be hard, because 5 grand is a lot to pay off. To pay off a $5000 balance in 12 months requires payments of $417. Miss one and you'll have to make it up over the remaining months. If you transferred a balance, you probably didn't have $420/mo to pay to the card in the first place. In summary, balance transfers can work, but you have to understand all of the terms and conditions, and what will happen should you violate any of them. If you don't understand what you're getting into, you could very well end up worse than you started."
"Transferring the balance of a credit card is what they call moving your debt from one credit card to another credit card or loan.  A debit card, however, is not debt. It is a card that is tied to a checking account with money in it. You can't transfer debt to your checking account. If you have enough money in your checking account to cover the balance of your credit card, you can pay it off.  That is a really good thing to do, because the balance on your credit card is costing you a lot in interest charges each month.  Were you perhaps thinking of ""transferring a balance"" from your debit card's checking account to a new credit card, where you would then have a new debt on the credit card, and extra cash in your debit card's checking account? This is possible with most credit cards, and is usually called a cash advance. However, just to caution you, cash advances typically have high interest rates. Often you will see promotions where they will offer low (or no) interest rate for a short time, but this is just a trick to entice you to borrow extra, knowing that if you need the money now, you'll most likely still need it in 6 months when the promotion expires. I don't recommend it."
"To answer your question as clarified in a comment: All I wanted to know what will happen if I enter my debit card number in the sixteen digit account number they offer on the application for balance transfer. That's all. Almost certainly (subject to the particular terms and conditions of the offer), no money will move, the only question is exactly when and how they will say no. If you do it online, and their system is clever enough to look up the IIN (the first six digits) of the card number you enter, their system might learn straight away that you  have entered a debit card number (eg a card starting 431940 is a Bank of Ireland debit card). Otherwise, you'll have to wait until the request goes to their back office system, which will eventually lead to the card issuer's system being contacted, at which point it will become clear that it's a debit card, and your transfer request will be refused at that point. That said, some credit card companies do offer a ""Money Transfer"" aka ""Super Balance Transfer"", which is an offer to transfer money directly into a bank account, putting the resulting debt on the credit card. I've never seen these offered without having to call a service centre and talk to a person, though, presumably so that they can check that the details they have for you (about income etc) are still correct."
I would take a closer look at each provider. I have one credit-card provider who when there is a large portion of credit available, they frequently offer promotions on balance transfers so you fill that credit, sometimes it can be 0% for xx months, or a very low % until paid off in full. If this is the case clear that card fully and balance transfer the remainder to get an even lower interest to make the repayments eaier to clear.