Do You Know Interest Pay?

Hello Folks — Usually when a man gets too big for his britches his hat won't fit either.

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As of today Freeborn can be called the county of 10,000 lakes. My, what a lot of water. 1 have seen more. 1 think it was in 1953 we had more during the summer than we have now. This kind of weather does things the politicians could never do — take care of the surplus corn. I don't think there will be much of a surplus next year.

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How much interest do you pay out in a year? I believe that few of us know, and if we get it figured out we pay a lot more than we realize.

Credit is a wonderful thing when it is used right, but abused it can be a mill stone and keeps many a man from getting ahead.

There are many ways of figuring interest and some of them are deceiving. One per cent per month sounds pretty reasonable but when it adds up to 12 per cent it gets mighty big. There are a good many people paying much more than that. Most of the time pay plans run around 16 per cent.


...tion it in the contract, It really makes a 'whollaper' of a lot if one gets 'bit' by such a deal.

The best thing is to stay out of debt for anything but a home or business. Then we learn to be thrifty and we are more apt to watch the purchases and see to that they are bought right.

1 think it is very important to teach our children thrift and how to buy wisely. They have to learn sometime and it should help by giving them an allowance when they are too young to earn it themselves and see to it that they learn to know that before there can be a penny spent there first has to be one earned. We are all creatures of habit and by teaching the youth the value of a dollar the nation grows stronger and more financially secure.

The credit and finance system is what has aided us in getting the great standard of living that we have but the abuse of it can also be our downfall. Borrowing when money is easy to get and then having to pay it back when the dollar is scarce is a situation that none of us would envy. Let's watch Huh.

One day a salesman stopped in and wanted to sell his wares. Had a good product but he didn't want cash. It had to be time payments I spread over two years. 1 insisted on figuring up what the interest rates were and they added up to almighty 24 per cent per year. No wonder he didn't want to sell for cash. He probably could get his financing for around 6 or 7 per cent, then turn around and get about four times that for the same money. That is what 1 call a raw deal. We had better all look out for our own financing lest we get taken into such a deal.

A feed salesman drove in the yard and insisted on selling some feed. He had a grand plan for the farmer. Pay when the hogs are sold.

I asked him what the interest figured out to. His answer was," Oh, just about the same as the bank charges." I took a pencil and figured it out. It came to 11 per cent. The catch was it was on about a 6 months term. The interest didn't sound like much but it counts up when you really, go to adding.

Then there is the service charge. I have been told that a lending institution can add a service charge and they don't have to men-...