Forever In Your Debt Addendum

Way back in my first fortnight of blogging, I ranted about why I hate commercials. I recently saw one that gave me another reason to hate them.

A lending company was advertising the fact that, "For a mortgage of $______, the banks would expect you to pay back at least $546 each month on their mortgages, but with our line of credit you can pay back as little as $450 per month!" And then the fine print at the bottom of the screen, which was very hard to read even on my 50-inch TV, and on-screen for only a second or two, indicated that the life of the loan would be 35 years or something like that.

In other words, they're reeling in fish with the tantalizing lure of lower monthly payments but not even acknowledging, unless you can read the tiny text at superspeed, that what they're really offering is 10 additional years of debt and undoubtedly greater interest payments over the life of the loan, even if they beat the interest rate quoted by the bank. And since the average American - this was on a US channel - probably doesn't have a great understanding of how compound interest or loan amortization work, they'll surely get lots of suckers to over-extend themselves that much more.

I realize capitalism says this sort of thing is OK, but it always burns me when I see it.