A-Train Finance

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that America is in a credit crunch.  The estimated debt for the United States government for 2008 is approximately $9.5 Trillion dollars.  Add to that the Wall Street bailouts that will cost upwards of $700 Billion dollars and we’re looking nearly a $10.5 trillion dollar debt.  Let me write that out for you.

$10,500,000,000,000.00

There are less 0’s in a bag of Oreos.  Everybody knows that when you have debt, you have to pay interest on it.  So let’s use a nominal amount of interest.  Say, 3%.  All of this debt is borrowed, chiefly from other countries and corporations.  So at our current deficit Americans are paying out $315 billion dollars, or:

$315,000,000,000.00

in interest each and every year, not to mention any new additions to the debt through purchases.

But how does it all affect you?  ‘It’s not my debt to pay’, you say.  Think again.  Do you use United States Dollars?  AKA the currency of the United States of America?  If you do, then you are directly paying for the debts of our government.  How you ask?  Every time our deficit goes up, the value of our dollar goes down.  The government is literally voluntarily making the things you spend your money on more expensive by making the money that you have less valuable.

The question is, how can you fight against this?  Unless you have a spare $10.5 trillion dollars laying around to help our government out, you need to be making a return on your money in order to prevent it from becoming less and less valuable.  Every day that cash lies under a mattress somewhere it is literally burning money.  Here’s some useful links that I’ve found:

A great way to get started is to manage your own debt in the best way possible.  A great resource that I found is www.credit-land.com. I’ve used it to compare different current credit offers and rates and finding the best rewards programs that fit my spending habits.

By using an online savings bank that gives a higher than average rate of return like E*Trade Financial’s Savings Bank,  you can make sure your money stays ahead of the current inflation rate and doesn’t lose value,  I use E*Trade myself.

Check the current American National Debt to the penny at TreasuryDirect.com.  Updated every single day with the exact amount of National Debt and who holds it.