Survey says...

Alan,

When I started working in Moscow illegally (did  not have residency permit), the company was doing different things, but one was doing research polling people, and they would have a team of 8-10 people flying across the country, staying in a hotel, having thousand of workers filling out the inquiry sheets, and then bring them back to Moscow and give it to a computer center (old mainframe systems), and have them run all that stuff, and then have a couple of PhD write the report.

I saw the report on the bosses table, and I looked at it, and then I told him that he did not need to spend so much time and effort and spend so much money, as i can write him these reports in one hour. the problems were the same everywhere, so all you do it change the Geographical names

Alan, kind of like the idiots who studied the sex lives of mosquitos.  I can tell you it's a short one if I get a chance to KILL them first.  But regardless.  WHO CARES???

Please, please, please tell me this wasn't a tax payer-funded survey? Or if it is, where do we sign up for running a market research gig?

Definitely seems like pretty obvious answers to me.  But if I had no mortgage payment I'd buy an investment property.  - Kasey

Interesting survay Alan. I wonder if each participant chose their largest debt to eliminate. Why wouldn't they. The survey could have been title: Who do you owe the most money?

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel......my mortgage is nearly but a memory!  Can't wait!

If I didn't have any debt I would get into debt. God bless America!

Who conducted that survey?  Captain Obvious?  Too funny.

Of course, if they have a large amount of credit card debt, that should be the one to go first.  The interest is higher than their mortgage & the interest payments are not tax deductible.  My guess is if they had their mortgage go away, the credit card debt would still weigh them down. 

I wonder how many of the poll respondents focus on paying down their mortgage? .. by making principal only payments? or double payments? or if they come into a windfall do they use it to pay down the principal. I'm guessing ...NOT!   But my grandparents did, and that generation did ... even my gramma's sugarbowl money went towards "getting it paid off".  I don't think our generation thinks like that, I think for most their mortgage is an "acceptable" debt and they let it ride along its own course unlike previous generations who scraped together nickels dropped between the furniture cushions to pay it off as early as they could. So I'm not surprised at the respondent's who answered the poll, I'm just wondering how many of them ACTIVELY work on paying it off.  My guess is the debt that most work the hardest to pay off and pay down would be credit cards.  Maybe that should have been the question -- what debt do you put the most effort into eliminating? Interesting..... thanks! J

I wonder if that was one of those government-sponsored surveys that cost a few million dollars!

Hmmmm.... I think I'd have to keep that mortgage debt and pay off anything else, since that's the only one that yields a tax deduction.

Alan I'm getting here a little late, but my thought ran along the line of Russel, Was this a government paid survey that was run by a think tank group? What line of reply was to eliminate the alimony check?

Really, in reading the results, it makes me wonder why the people in charge didn't bail us out instead of certain industries one by one.  It would have been less expensive and we would have paid off mortgage, bought new cars, etc all by ourselves.  I mean, after all, doesn't the government think it's citizens are capable?