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I'm a student with an excellent credit rating. I'm current on all my loan payments and have never done anything less than pay off the balance on my credit every month. Until recently, I had a Washington Mutual credit card with a 14% APR, but I just got a notice from Chase that they are raising my rates up to %22. Can they really do that? I've had a credit card for almost 10 years and never missed a payment. It's frankly a little insulting. Is that what's going to happen to people with good credit like myself?

I like Regina and her husbands's sense of responsibility in that we all should have a certain amount of 'cash' available whether for an emergency, or for a situation like the current economic downturn.

After several arguements with an 'account manager' I choose to fire him for exactly that reason. He insisted that I should be totally invested in stocks as his arguement was that this was where the money was to be made, however his approach had lost me a considerable percent of my portfolio. I argued that while not questioning the value of the stocks he was putting me into, that we should take profits when available, and because I was taking monthly distributions pre 59and1/2, that we should always have at least several months of cash on hand so that (1.)we would not be forced to sell at a disadvantaged position, and (2.) if we had cash on hand we had much more flexibility in purchasing stocks that were hit for no valid reason other than perhaps another stock in that catagory took a hit.

As I said, I fired him, and though I am down the current 2 months, I had turned his regular losses into gains doing my own trading online. Things in the markets were not looking 'correct' to me, and after the first of the 2008 year I put 40 percent of my portfolio into cash actually expecting what became public in October and September to have occurred as early as April. Among the major reasons for this were 2 things. A couple indicators made it appearant there was way too much 'short selling' was going on, and I even wrote to one of my Senators of my concern for this in the markets. 2nd; spending was simply getting out of control by both government and by the public. I also wrote both of my Senators and my Representative about the 'out-of-control banking and credit card businesses in the US. Credit card debt was getting 'unrealistic', and too many people who simply could not afford it were buying homes clearly beyond their means. Simply put, the handwriting was on the wall, we were heading for a 'crash'.

I cannot take credit for figuring this out all on my own as some of the reasoning came from older people. They might be old, they might have moments of senility, but there is always something to be gleaned from their stories about when . . . . It amazes me that we always seem to have to learn everything from our own personal experiences after ignoring the lessons we could have learned for free by just paying attention to 'history'. The excuse that "I'm too poor paying taxes to pay attention just don't make 'cents'!"