This is a story from my dad.
During a recession he applied for a small personal loan for a few thousand dollars from his bank. He had excellent credit, was a homeowner, stable job, yadda yadda. His loan approval should’ve sailed through easily.
But because of the recession, the bank was trying to be extra careful about loaning out money. A loan officer called him to review his paperwork, and asked him what he was going to spend the loan on.
Dad was pissed. He said it’s a PERSONAL loan, and it’s none of their business what he’s going to do with it. It’s personal.
The bank dude was really nice, he explained the situation and said he’s just doing his job. He had to fill out paperwork, one of the spaces required that he writes what dad was going to do with the money.
Dad said, “Ok, when I get the money, I’m going to take it all out of the bank in cash, go home, open my window and throw it all outside.”
He found out a few days later he was approved for the loan.
I hate that they have to ask that too, but my understanding is the legal reasoning is to try and weed out money launderers or some shit like that.
As an aside, let me just encourage everyone here to use credit unions. I needed a very small loan once, only $500, to send to a sibling in another state who had lost his job and just needed short-term help. They wouldn’t approve the $500, but I was told they would approve $4000, which infuriated me as it was clearly a predatory tactic.
So I switched to a CU. My CU even taught me how to avoid overdraft fees in case I ever make a mistake. (Keep a line of credit open, that way if I accidentally overdraft the money would come from that and no fees.) I love banking with them.
Also, I actually make interest money with my credit union savings account. A few bucks a month isn’t a ton, but it’s a few bucks a month more than I ever got from Wells Fargo.
Nice!
I have my investments spread a bit between oil, crypto, and VTI (an ETF). I’ve been lucky. The oil stock I bought at bargain prices in March 2020 paid off my student loans and my down payment on my condo.
Why would you invest stocks into something that’s destroying the environment of the very planet you, I, the others on reddit and the rest of humanity live on excluding those currently in space.
Sorry if my comment ends up being spammed multiple times, it might be because of a bug if I’m not actually timing out
It was a short-term investment. When the airline industry shut down, oil bottomed out, but I knew it was only a matter of time before COVID subsided and air travel came back, and when it did, I made a profit selling those stocks.
I’d also add that, if I had any real power to reverse climate change, I would. The people in my country are powerless to create real change because American corporations are the biggest polluters, and they also own all of our legislators.