Buying HiFi at credit, anyone?

Oh...this is what you meant by "paying cash"...I am sure that everybody else had decoded what you REALLY meant!!!!!!!! tks for the entertainment.

Thefalls1117, you hit the nail on the head. My wife is a Internal Medicine MD. She's always telling me stories just like the one you told. No one on their death bed wants more money! I'm not in debt but,I have been and it was a very stressfull time in my life. Now I live way below my means and don't try to impress anybody with what I own or have achieved. The secret to happy living is having your backyard clean because we are not guaranteed our next breath.

Since this thread has turned into a seminar on credit, I will add my two coppers.
The interest on credit is the SAME as renting the item, only much,much cheaper.
Say you want a car, spend $22,000. @ 7%
That 'rental' costs $128.00 month, with every month costing less as you begin to trade renting it for owning it.
Try 'renting' that car from Hertz for $128. a week!!!
My home theater system on credit:
A Sony 42" plasma, Denon 4806 receiver, Denon 5910 DVD, Canton 7.1 with 4 CD300 and 3 CD360.. even at 'high' interest rates is a rental cost of $75.00 month... Consider 'some' cash in the deal and it is $60.00 month.. or $2 a day 'rental'.
Now you COULD go to RentaCenter and get some cardboard trash for $100.00 a month rental.. but aren't we smarter than that?
Also the (sensible) use of credit builds a credit rating. A must. (I personally know a dude who DID get everything in his life with cash.. Then was totally flabbergasted when a card issuer denied him a card at age 42 with zero debt and $20,000 in the bank. The dude had NO CREDIT HISTORY!)
Anyway, I use and abuse credit whenever and where-ever possible.
For the folks who feel they must be independently wealthy by the age of 35, my strategy is flawed. But, since I am ALREADY way past 35 AND STILL FLAT BROKE, with a (small, very small) mountain of debt.. who cares!
I plan on dying broke... the state can cremate my remains, if they ever find them...

Elizabeth,

Awesome post, I could not agree with you more. One of my former partners (we lost our hospital contract for services) used to rave of the most influential book he ever read about the ideal time of dying being when you absolutely ran out of all funds/credit/assets.... While I think none of use could do this, as time of death is so difficult to assess, but it always comes to my mind when patients are told their disease is terminal, and they have (enter lame guess here) time to live.

I think once I got over the shock and new found drug abuse, I would be rather liberated and it would be perhaps a better way to end my life than some surprise MVA or such that took you out with no forewarning.

BTW How do you like the Canton CD 300's?? I was supposed to get them, then some things changed, I use their Vento's for my main rig and LOVE them, I think you would be hard pressed to find better for less than twice the price.

Like I said earlier, its easy to rationalize the use of credit cards as clearly evidenced in this thead.