Jessa, Ben & Spurgeon Part 3

[violynn]

Just now, twinmama said:

Here what you have is not a credit card, it is a debit card. It takes money directly from your bank account. A credit card has a limit you can spend, but they'll just keep raising it in my experience. Debit card just runs down what money you actually have, credit cards you can spend money you don't have.

Also, you pay credit card bills by transferring money from your checking account to the credit card company, by check, or online bill pay type thing.

[quiverofdoubt]

8 minutes ago, violynn said:

Also, you pay credit card bills by transferring money from your checking account to the credit card company, by check, or online bill pay type thing.

This. a debit card draws straight from your account that it is linked to. A credit card gives you a line of credit- the card company pays for your purchases at the time of swiping (or thereabouts) then sends you a bill each month that lists all the items bought with the card and the total. There's a minimum payment you need to make- so say you spent 300 that month on the card. You minimum payment might be 100 dollars. Whatever you can't afford to pay over the 100 dollars gets charged interest.  so next month your bill is 1)what you spent this month 2) the 200$ left on the bill from last month + interest on that 200.  It's easy to get into a lot of credit trouble quickly if you can't afford to pay the full amount each month. Hence the term living beyond your means.

as long as you pay it off completely each month you can avoid the penalties and interest problems and it helps build your credit score. If not you can just slide further and further into the debt cycle.

[albanuadh_1]

Enine:  Wondering if you are in Europe. Friend of mine  lived in Denmark ( years ago) and all bills were paid through the bank/post office. She would get what was left over from her pay cheque.

[Jinderella]

I live in Europe and we have cards we call debitcards. They are linked to our bankaccount, and when we use them, money is written from our account immidiatelly. We have a creditcard too, mostly for travelling and international internet purgases. We have one from American Express for example. Once a month we will get a bill with everything we bought and this amount will be taken from our bankaccount automatically. When there isn't enough money in your bankaccount, AMEX wil call you and warn you to put more funds in your account. Then they will try to take out the amount again. No interest till this point. I think if you don't have the money to pay the amount, they will ask interest, but I have no experience with that. Only debt that isn't frowned upon over here is morgage. 

[Trynn]

I have a credit card, and then I foolishly decided to go back to school. I also decided to try and do it without taking out student loans. So, my savings account got emptied to pay for school, and then I needed things like textbooks and contacts, all of which went on the credit card.

I work minimum wage and am only allowed to work 28 hours a week because obamacare. But frankly, with school, I wish I could be working less, because I am failing because work just makes me so tired, I have trouble studying.

Tl;dr I have way more credit card debt than I am able to pay off. The contacts (glasses were too expensive to consider) were like $300.

It's not always possible to pay off a credit card in full, though I can and do make more than the minimum ammount of payments.

If being able to see means living beyond my means, well, I guess I'm living beyond my means.... Though admittedly, school is a luxury rather than a need.

Bottom line: not all debt is avoidable. If I can't see, I can't work. Also, I end up spending more money on painkiller because holy headaches batman!

[Hera]

We had to incur some credit card  debt to start our own business because we put most of our cash back into the business.  Business is successful and debt is being paid off, but unless you have piles of money laying around or a TV show, for most people, any entreprenural effort or higher education is going to require incurring some debt to start out.  Do, I don't consider debt incurred to invest in your financial future a bad debt.  Running up cards on commodities, on the other hand, is a problem because those things are just money gone. 

[quiverofdoubt]

There are a lot of reasons in the US that people go into debt outside of living beyond means, i didn't mean to imply that's the only reason. The fact that school costs are insane in this country is one. Medical costs are another.  No universalized/socialized health care means many people go into debt just for basic needs.  Others are doing fine until a major medical event that can cost 10's or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Way more than their savings/income can pay for.

I had a one night, procedure less hospital stay. cost my insurance 10 grand. one night!

I've always wondered about the duggar no health insurance policy. I believe they would have been in a ton of trouble with josie's medical bills if it wasn't for tlc. If there is no tlc money in place and another major health crisis comes up in the family I don't know how they will pay for it.  I kind of think they allowed all that filming of a micro premie because tlc offered to pay nicu bills if they could film. 

[Hera]

They don't believe in health insurance? What about life insurance?

[Mercer]

1 hour ago, Trynn said:

I work minimum wage and am only allowed to work 28 hours a week because obamacare.

Sorry to nitpick, but if you are only allowed to work 28 hours a week, it's because your employer is not willing to provide you with healthcare benefits and is avoiding it by capping your hours. It's your employer's choice, not the government's. Obamacare lets you work as much as you want as long as your employer is compensating you accordingly in benefits, which not all employers are going to want to do.

You may already know this, and if so I apologize for the repeat, but a lot of the part-time employees I've talked to think the government is limiting their employer, when in fact it's a self-imposed limit by the employer to avoid providing the benefits that became mandatory as a fair labor practice under Obamacare. 

[notfundy]

18 minutes ago, Mercer said:

Sorry to nitpick, but if you are only allowed to work 28 hours a week, it's because your employer is not willing to provide you with healthcare benefits and is avoiding it by capping your hours. It's your employer's choice, not the government's. Obamacare lets you work as much as you want as long as your employer is compensating you accordingly in benefits, which not all employers are going to want to do.

You may already know this, and if so I apologize for the repeat, but a lot of the part-time employees I've talked to think the government is limiting their employer, when in fact it's a self-imposed limit by the employer to avoid providing the benefits that became mandatory as a fair labor practice under Obamacare. 

So glad Mercer came along to clear this up.  It's an example of how the actual real-life provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) have been twisted  so that the public is more likely to "hate" ObamaCare.  

Employers are required to offer health insurance to their employees once they work 28 hours per week.  That was written into the law to help employers manage the costs of part-time employers.  Again, if an employer purposely keeps you to just under 28 hours a week, that is on them, not on Obamacare.  And btw that's been going on for years and years, esp in the restaurant/bar/hospitality industry.  The boss keeps you to just under whatever the fulltime hours are to avoid offering the health insurance that's offered to management.  Way before Obamacare! 

Now, we can all agree or disagree about whether or not health insurance should even be tied to where (or if) you work, but that's the way it is in the U.S.A.  If you work less than 28 hours/week for whatever reason, you will probably qualify for a health insurance policy that you can get through the health care marketplace (lots of choices).  You will likely receive a subsidy from the government to make your cost lower.  That said, you will still have copayments and deductibles like almost all insurance has so I realize it's hard to afford.  

Finally, when you ask people if they agree with coverage for pre-existing conditions or with whether young adults can remain on their family's health policy's longer, they all say "well of course!"  Well - you can thank evil ObamaCare for that.

If the Duggars, Dillards or whoever decide not to carry that "ebil gubment" health insurance, the costs of their care when it is needed falls to (a) those of us who DO carry insurance and (b) to government programs/laws in the USA that ensure no one "dies in the streets"  (as the Donald is fond of saying).     Makes me so mad that these fundies claim they don't rely on any government programs.  I call bullshit all the way around on this stuff.  

 

 

 

 

[quiverofdoubt]

From my understanding at the time they wrote 20 and counting at least, they don't believe in health insurance. I don't remember if that extends to life insurance. They believe insurance is a form of gambling, and therefore forbidden by the bible. So they pay for dentists appts (non filmed by tlc) and hospital stays etc out of pocket.  They don't care where the insurance comes from, just insurance in general is evil because jesus.  I don't know how they feel about being forced to pay car insurance, as it's illegal to not have it.

[guitar_villain]

2 hours ago, Trynn said:

Tl;dr I have way more credit card debt than I am able to pay off. The contacts (glasses were too expensive to consider) were like $300.

For glasses, I've been using Zenni Optical for the family since kids break theirs.    Absurdly cheaper than getting them from an optometrist- the ones I'm wearing right now are memory titanium frames, polycarbonate lenses, scratch/oil/smudge resistant coatings and cost $40.  My doctor wanted something like $250 for inferior framed versions of the same.

I skip some of the features and nice frames for the kids and they come in at less than $30.

Not an employee, just really happy with the company since they have saved me a ton of money over the years.

[ksgranola1]

Josie's hospital care was all covered by JB's insurance. I remember them talking about it.

[notfundy]

3 minutes ago, ksgranola1 said:

Josie's hospital care was all covered by JB's insurance. I remember them talking about it.

well they may have said that, but every baby who weighs less than 1,200 g at birth qualifies for state-administered and state/federally-funded Medicaid.   I believe Josie was in that category so, any portion of the estimated $500,000 or more NICU bill incurred by Josie that was not covered by JB's private insurance plan was paid by the Great State of Arkansas

Also - I think Josie was born pre-ObamaCare.  (Is she six now? I forget)  That means most insurance policies still had lifetime limits, often of $1,000,000 or even less.  It was not unusual  (pre 2010) for micro-preemies to exceed the limit and therefore be literally kicked off mom and/or dad's insurance policy.  

Of course, Medicaid (or the "evil Government" according to the Duggars) would then respond because we would not want the baby to be without care.

 

[enine]

17 hours ago, twinmama said:

Here what you have is not a credit card, it is a debit card. It takes money directly from your bank account. A credit card has a limit you can spend, but they'll just keep raising it in my experience. Debit card just runs down what money you actually have, credit cards you can spend money you don't have.

Not exactly. My credit card is a credit card that has a limit (I chose the limit myself and I guess the limit could be way more than what I decided to) and is paid at the end of the month. My debit card doesn't have a limit, so I can spend whatever amount I'm willing to spend, as long as there's money on my bank accound. The money I spend is removed directly after I paid.

[enine]

I just finnished reading through. Someone of you asked if I life in Europe. Yes, I do, not in Denmark, though. But I love Denmark! 

Thanks for all the wonderful answers, I'm actually really surprised that people in the States aren't ALL in deep debt. I would probably forget to pay my credit card bill every month.

Coming back to Derrick and JB being debt free. That was and always has been the thing that "fascinates" me the most about the Duggars. Derrick went to college, didn't he? And college in the US is super expensive. Does anyone know how he paid for that? Did he have a stipend? How on earth did JB pay for all the hospital births (they already had, what, 14 kids, before the first special started) and how did he feed his kids? Even if they didn't have enough food, nobody ever starved to death. They all wore clothes and didn't go around naked, they drove cars, they lived in a house...

I earn more than the average earns where I life and I life in a shared apartement with two roommates (so I don't have to pay very much rent), I didn't have to pay for my college degree (it's free here) and therefor don't have any debt, my boyfriend has a steady job and we could afford having a kid or two or even three, but I can hardly imagine feeding 5 kids let alone 19.

Seriously, even if you're having a lot of real estate and you're renting it out, I can't imagine how JB made it all work without getting into debt. With 14 kids and no TV show.

[choralcrusader8613]

1 hour ago, enine said:

Coming back to Derrick and JB being debt free. That was and always has been the thing that "fascinates" me the most about the Duggars. Derrick went to college, didn't he? And college in the US is super expensive. Does anyone know how he paid for that?

He said in that finances talk that he got a scholarship for 4 years. I'm assuming it was enough to cover the costs that his parents/his mom once his dad died couldn't.

[DuggarWatch]

3 minutes ago, choralcrusader8613 said:

He said in that finances talk that he got a scholarship for 4 years. I'm assuming it was enough to cover the costs that his parents/his mom once his dad died couldn't.

I think Derick's parents could afford to pay for his college.  They both had good jobs all of their lives and only had two kids.

[SassyPants]

1 hour ago, DuggarWatch said:

I think Derick's parents could afford to pay for his college.  They both had good jobs all of their lives and only had two kids.

Could and would are very different things. My ILs were quite well off and they only paid for their youngest child (he was much younger than the rest) to attend college- the other 6 were on their own. Some parents think kids need to fund their own education.

[gustava]

Do we know if they really call him Spurgeon?

[nst]

16 minutes ago, gustava said:

Do we know if they really call him Spurgeon?

in the xmas video they did 

drinking game for everytime they do it on the new show 

[EmCatlyn]

This didn't seem to merit its own thread, but I was quite thrilled to discover that Ben may have named Spurgie after a movie hero instead of a pompous Victorian theologian.  

In the context of another search altogether, I found that the character of Tanner, from the movie Deep Impact, was actually named SPURGEON TANNER.  IMDb Character Link

In the 1998 movie, Spurgeon Tanner is an experienced astronaut who, when the less-experienced, cocky, younger astronaut who heads their mission is hurt during the mission (which fails), takes leadership of the team, keeps bad things from getting worse, and eventually leads the others in a glorious rescue of the Earth through their heroic self-sacrifice.

How much do you want to bet that Ben saw this very patriotic movie (even if it does tangentially mention that the earth once had dinosaurs) and thought it was a cool name?  It makes a lot more sense than his being inspired to afflict the kid with such a name all on his own. 

I am not saying that Ben wasn't thinking of Charles Spurgeon when he picked the name, but he may have thought it was a cool name because this really cool guy (played by Robert Duval) in the movie had it.  (I see Ben as more a movie person than a book person, somehow.)

The rest of the world agreed with us about the name.  Spurgeon Tanner made it to the List of Stupidest Movie Character Names.

For what it's worth, anyway.

[EmmieJ]

8 hours ago, ksgranola1 said:

Josie's hospital care was all covered by JB's insurance. I remember them talking about it.

I find that very doubtful.  Josie's birth and subsequent hospitalization must have cost a fortune and I am pretty sure it was covered under some form or combination of state and federal aid.

[MatthewDuggar]

When was it said that the Duggars don't believe in Health Insurance and/or don't have any?   I know for sure they had some sort of co-op health insurance way back when.  It was either in their book or on one of the first specials.

[EmmieJ]

Just now, MatthewDuggar said:

When was it said that the Duggars don't believe in Health Insurance and/or don't have any?   I know for sure they had some sort of co-op health insurance way back when.  It was either in their book or on one of the first specials.

I believe JB has either said on the show or in one of their books, that they do have some form of health coverage.  Isn't it Scamaritan?