Clear visualization of credit card loans

Hi all.

I explained about credit card loans. I will give you a way to visualize them, by turning them on their head.

Imagine you are loaning $200 to your friend, who I’ll call Mike, at 20 percent interest compounded monthly. You allow him to pay it off at any time he wants, and to get more money from you.

This means that each month, he should pay you about 4 dollars. 4 dollars from one person is not a lot. But say you have the same amount being borrowed by 2 thousand other people. The total loan amount? $400,000. The minimum payment on this per person? Still 4 dollars each month.

Now, let’s say that you decrease the interest rate by 10 percent, but increase the loan amount by a number that still allows you to get an average minimum payment of 4 dollars per month. What is this loan amount? About 122 dollars!

What about the reverse? (Decreasing the loan amount by $100) The new interest rate would be about 50 percent!

Isn’t it shocking when you think of it in another way?

What is a credit card?

Hi all.

A credit card is a loan. You are borrowing money from a credit card company. Loans aren’t free money!

Let’s create an imaginary credit card, at 20 percent annual interest and buy a 200 dollar item with it. There will be a 30 day billing cycle.

The balance is $200. You owe $200. You have to repay this, plus a finance charge.

What is the finance charge on the balance? Finance charge = Average daily balance * APR * Number of days in billing cycle / 365 days in a year

What is the average daily balance? Average daily balance = (Balance on day 1 + … + Balance on day N) / Number of days in billing cycle

Assuming that we don’t repay this loan at all during the month, the finance charge is:

Average daily balance = $200 * 30 days not repaid / 30 = $200

Finance charge =  $200 * 0.20 * 30 / 365 = $3.29

So you must repay $200 plus $3.29. Sound small?

Well, let’s pretend that you do not repay the loan at all for 43 months (3 years and 7 months). The accumulating finance charge will be close to $141.47 ($3.29 x 43 months).

The minimum payment

There is a certain percentage that credit cards require in payment, which is pretty small. Let’s calculate it for our imaginary $200 debt:

200*x = 3.29

x = 3.29/200

x = 0.01645

The minimum payment on this balance is 2 percent.

If we paid 2 percent on $203.29, the balance would go down by $4.07, but it would be offset by $3.34 of finance charges. So the balance next month would be:  $202.56. So effectively it has gone down by 73 cents! Some credit cards have an exact minimum payment also attached, looking like: The greater of 3% of the balance or 30 dollars. Even if 30 dollars is greater than 3 percent of the balance, the 30 dollars is eaten up by finance charges in about a year, assuming that the loan is not repaid by then.

Paying it off “early”

Maybe you’ve never realized that you can pay off your credit card loan earlier in the month. This results in a lower finance charge. Huh? Let’s try it out.

Using our imaginary $200 loan, let’s pretend we make a $50 payment every 5 days, stopping the third week.

Visualization:

Day 1 to 4 – $200

Day 5 to day 9 – $150

Day 10 to day 14 – $100

Day 15 to day 30 – $100

Let’s determine the finance charge:

Average daily balance = ($200 *  4 days) + ($150 * 4 days) + ($100 * 15 days) / 30 days = $800 + $600 + $1500 / 30 days = $2900 / 30 =  $96.67

Finance charge = $96.67 * 0.20 * 30 / 365 = $1.59

We have saved $1.70 by paying $50 every 5 days. This can add up to a lot of money over many years.

The lesson here? Credit cards are not a very good way to go if you cannot repay the loan at the end of the month, and/or every few days.

“Hearing Impaired”

Hi all.

The title of this post is the phrase “Hearing Impaired”, a word which drives me absolutely crazy.

What if I called you wheelchair impaired because you could walk?

What if I called you sanely impaired because you thought slowly?

What if I called you reading impaired because you read slowly?

You wouldn’t like me to call you these words, right?

So, please don’t call me or any other deaf person (whether or not they know ASL) “hearing impaired”. The phrases above that I could’ve called you are so degrading that you would feel berated.

Thank you.

- Kyle

How to truly love other people

We have great difficulty with loving other people as they are.

There are many ways to do that, but only one will be mentioned here:

COMMUNICATION

It is really vital that we communicate our thoughts, opinions and feelings to other people so that we can be heard.

If you were not able to do that, you would feel:

• frustrated
• lonely
• depressed

Communication may seem easy, but it is not easy. You see, there are two parts to communication:

• sending the message
• receiving the message

In between these steps, meaning is almost always lost because words cannot fully describe what we mean. Words are symbols for a concept that is only experienced in the brain.

In my last post, I defined what love is:

We don’t understand what love means. We think love means romantic love, but romantic love is temporary. To love someone else is to have joy for them.

I also, albeit subtly, defined what joy is:

The most important thing that has joy for us[?] [is] The Sun.

[...]

[You see,] it shines regardless of what we are doing right now.

(Emphasis mine and text added to clarify)

Joy is gladness regardless of circumstances.

I do not want people to misunderstand what I am talking about. That is how important I value communication.

How can we communicate with love?

• Think before you speak. Many a communication befuddle could have been avoided if we chose to think before we spoke.
• Listen. Focus on what the other person is saying. Do not interrupt other people while they are talking.
• Be aware of what constitutes a message. Words only make up seven percent of a message. The rest is made up of how people say words (38 percent) and body language (55 percent).

The problem with “Rent to Own”

Hi all.

I’d like to make you aware of what Rent to Own is and why it is such a big problem in my opinion.

It can be best explained with a example.

You go to a store, They sell a TV in two different ways.

First way: Buy outright at $2,200.

Second way: Pay $60/week – price is $2,200. When you buy the TV, you’re not really buying the TV. You’re really buying the privilege to have it at a certain address until you pay it off.

Let’s look at the second way:

What is the effective APR? 142%

How much of the per week cost goes to the store? (Interest) $59.86

How much of the per week cost goes to the TV? (Principal) 14 cents

Is this a fair distribution? You decide. Hopefully this hypothetical example should answer this question for you.

A bank provides an savings account at rates of 142 percent compounded quarterly. You put 50 dollars into this account. How much will the account have at the end of 1 year without any monthly additions?

A = P(1 + i)^n

P = $50

i = 1.42 / 4 = 0.355

n = 4

A = 50(1 + 0.355)^4

A = 168.54939003125

which, when rounded up, is $168.55. The interest: $118.55.

Can the bank afford to do that for 1 thousand accounts over 10 years? Look:

$118.55 * 1,000 accounts * 10 years = $1,185,500.

If you opened a rent to own business, you could get that much money if you sold the hypothetical TV about twice every hour for 24 hours, or about once every hour for 8 hours.

Pick one: Rent your TV, or own your TV. Don’t do both for America’s sanity. Please. I beg you.

Interpretation of “Will you bring an interpreter??”

I decided to interpret a video called “Will you bring an interpreter??”, which is done in ASL. The English interpretation is below.

Hi, the video looks better. I got tired of struggling with my webcam, so I decided to buy a new webcam for Christmas. As well, I am getting tired of having hearing people ask me “Will you bring an interpreter?”. If I phone a doctor for an appointment, they will ask me if I will bring an interpreter. My usual response to this question has been to explain about the ADA law, my rights, and so on. Sometimes, they respond by hanging up the phone so abruptly, it seems that they are angry. I have been thinking about how to briefly respond to what they ask me so that they comprehend fully. Finally, I thought about a suitable answer. I haven’t yet used it because no one has asked me if I will bring a interpreter. I will give you the answer i thought of to see if it works for you or, if it doesn’t, you can give me another answer. So, an example: Suppose you phone a doctor for an appointment, they may ask you if you will bring a interpreter. You could respond as follows: “I’m just wondering, do you have people going to your office in a wheelchair?”. They could say: “Yes, we do have a few patients in a wheelchair”. You could then say: “Do you ask them to bring their own ramp?” They could say: “No.” You could then say: “I have the same rights as people in wheelchairs, so why did you ask me for an interpreter? You don’t ask people in wheelchairs to bring their own ramp!” Will this embarrass the hearing person enough to understand, or what could be another way to do so? Thanks.

The Problem With The Federal Reserve System

Hi all.

I was watching a movie called “Zeitgeist” ( http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/). In there, it talked about the Federal Reserve System, which it says has various problems having to do witth the origin of it.

The fact is,  the Federal Reserve is a private corporation which is making a profit EVERY SINGLE DAY from its primary customer, the US government. The profit is accomplished through interest added to each and every single US dollar. In about 10 years, the  US government may be bankrupt.

But I will show you, from YOUR perspective, the problem with the system by analogy.

OK, let’s get started.

Say that the Federal Reserve was your bank. Let’s name your bank “Money Reserve” for fun.

Now say you want to get a loan for a new house from the “Money Reserve” bank. You find one costing $200,000. You ask the bank for the loan, and they buy the house, and give you their bank loan terms and conditions.

Somewhere in the pages of the terms and conditions, you find that you are required to pay 1/12 of 10 percent of the mortgage cost each month, with 5 percent interest compounded monthly. Next year, you will do the same, with the new cost subtracted from 10 percent.

Let’s do some calculations:

10 percent of $200,000 = $20,000

Each month, you have to pay: $20,000 / 12 = $1,666.66

That doesn’t include the interest though. Let’s do the interest:

A = P(1 + i)^n

P = $1,666.66

i = 0.05/12

n = 12

A = 1666.66(1 + 0.05/12)^12

A = 1666.66(1.0041666666666666666666666666667)^12

A = 1666.66(1.0511618978817331898048738909608)

A = 1751.9294887235694381201911191087

Which, when rounded up, is: $1,751.93

OK. So, for this first month, you have to pay $1,751.93. (That’s $85.27 of interest!)

But what about next month? And the month after that?

Now, lets subtract 10 percent from $200,000.

$200,000 – 10 percent ($20,000) = $180,000

Now we have to do the same thing over and over for each year. Or do we?

Let’s just look at the remaining amount and do some extrapolating.

Other than the previous year, there are 9 more years in this mortgage. For each year in this mortgage, you must pay 1/12 of 10 percent PLUS interest.

How many compounding periods do we have? 12 months * 9 years = 108 compounding periods

Now, we knw the present value: $180,000

So:

A = P(1 + i)^n

P = $180,000

i = 0.05/12

n = 12 * 9

A = 180000(1 + 0.05/12)^180

A = 180000(1.0041666666666666666666666666667)^180

A = 180000 * 2.1137039324385362491334373097549

A = 380466.70783893652484401871575589

Which, when rounded up, is $380,466.71.

So far, that is the principal AND interest over 9 years.

But we need to get the monthly payment:

$380,466.71 – $180,000 = $200,466,71 (principal)

Now we need to divide by 9 years and 12 months.

$200,466.71 / 9 years / 12 months = $1,856.17

That is very close to  the monthly payment for the first month, which was $1,751.93.

In order to make the monthly  payment, you would have to earn at least $50,000/year for a comfortable living standard.

Should ASL Vlogs be captioned? My opinion

Hi all.

I have been watching ASL video logs, captioned and not. My whole opinion on the captioning issue is as follows.

Deaf people have been taking advantage of technology in order to use it to their own benefit. Examples include TTYs, closed captioning on TVs, etc.

Now, here comes new technology: the webcam / camcorder.

How should Deaf people use it? Some have chosen to make posts on blogs linking to their videos. These are called ASL video logs.

I have seen captioned ASL vlogs, and to be absolutely honest with you, I focused more on the captions than on the signing.

To me, that is OK for TVs where I can look at the captioning and the TV at the same time because the captioning is the only way to access the TV.

That is NOT OK for ASL vlogs for three reasons, which I will categorize here as Necessity, Economic and Dilution.

–

Necessity: ASL video logs are just a few of the primary ways by which Deaf people spread their language, culture and heritage. Is it really, truly necessary to caption them when we can just put up a separate transcript?

Economic: There is a problem with captioning your own ASL video logs, which is that you are biased. You have your own ideas and opinions of what you signed on the video log, but these are only your own. To resolve this bias, you could pay someone to caption your own ASL vlogs. Captioning is expensive in terms of time and resources, so you could pay quite a lot. Do Deaf people really have a lot of money in general? It’s one of the reasons that there is no charge for using VRS!

Dilution: The mental effort it takes to look at both the captions and the signing at the same time is so taxing. English and ASL are two different languages, with different syntax, culture, etc. Therefore, it should not surprise you that I pick the captions since I’m used to looking at captions on TV! This is an ASL video log, not a English video log, yet the experience is EXACTLY like that when I look at captioned ASL video logs. Due to the mental effort and the extremely unintutive experience of looking at captioned ASL video logs, the beauty and uniqueness of ASL goes down the drain. Some people choose to caption ASL video logs to help hearing people understand what they are saying. i feel that is a very misguided decision. Ultimately, due to the dilution of language (Are English and ASL separate languages? Why is this captioned if so?), it will be the Deaf community who takes the brunt of the damage resulting from one small speck of history.

–

In conclusion, I feel that I have made a significant point that other members of the  Deaf community will appreciate understanding. Small decisions have a veery big impact on other people, and ultimately it is your own responsibility to, before making decisions that seem small, analyze the impact on other people.

- Kyle

Deaf picnic this year and unusual customer service at Starbucks today.

Hi all,

Deaf picnic

Yesterday (June 10, 2008), I went to this year’s Deaf picnic. I really loved it. A few of my favorite things:

• More students are signing than last year
• The magic show this year was great. There was a different person this year, and he was absolutely great. I volunteered in one of his magic tricks, he put something (I do not remember what) around my head – I felt famous as the photographer was taking pictures of me.
• The games were absolutely great. Except for throwing the egg at your partner and back, the games changed this year. They were fun.

Unusual customer service at Starbucks today

After I entered my placement building, I was waiting for my interpreter. I got concerned that she would not arrive, so I asked a employee to call my school and see if she was sick. The employee told me to wait for my supervisor, but eventually my interpreter arrived. Al had not arrived at that time, so we went over to Starbucks.

At Starbucks, I got apple juice – get this – from one of the cashiers directly as I was sitting at the table waiting! Talk about great customer service. My interpreter said that the cashier probably knew that we go to Starbucks pretty often, and I ask for apple juice. The cashier even signs! Wow, just wow.

I couldn’t ask for more wonderful times!

- Kyle

My church and being gay

Hey all,

It looks like I may have to make a difficult decision. First thing though, I’m gay. But that makes things difficult with regard to coming out.

I have no idea whether or not I should go to my deaf church anymore, especially since my pastor believes that being gay is wrong.

But I know it is not wrong. I cannot continue to pretend that I’m not gay, because God made me this way.

But on the other hand, I like going to my deaf church every other Sunday. I just wish that it didn’t have to end this way.

I should stop procrasinating on decisions and start taking action.

- Kyle Brooks