Introduction:

This assignment shows, in detail, credit card debt as it relates to time. Specifically, it gives evidence of how credit card debt can be manipulated to give a cost advantage to the lender, or the borrower.

Reflection:

Everyone has always heard the old advice, usually from parents, about not getting themselves into debt, but oh my, we get out the excuses when we first experience that new car smell.

We know it will have to be financed and the payment seems doable, but many of us don’t look much further into the details of that financing, especially not what it will end up costing in the end, or better yet how to reduce what it will cost in the end. 

The most enlightening part of this assignment is just that, how to reduce what it will cost in the end. 23 years to pay off a debt of $2000? Are you kidding me? This makes me believe the terms are engineered to be purposefully malicious. I guess that why they call the little shop on the corner a loan shark, cause they’ll bite you if you let them. 

But, you don’t have to let them! With a little education of the terms, you can avoid the pain by paying only a little more each month. By paying $50 instead of $25 each month, it takes only 4.5 years instead of 23 years to pay off the loan. And it costs you $2700 instead of $6700 in the end. That seems favorable to me. 

The only thing I would have added to this assignment is a graph. I tried to make one up on Desmos, but couldn’t get the scaling right without zooming in or out to show the exponential curve the way I would have liked. To me, the most impressive thing about exponential growth or decay is the shape of the curve, which in this case, would give a dramatic and convincing visual representation of how the loan shark is taking advantage of you.