You Deserve a Luxurious Vacation…Let Me Finance It For You

Posted by Frank

June 17, 2008

Today, I receive an email from CitiFinancial. This isn’t rare, being they send email to current and past customers at an annoying frequency. As you can tell from the text of the email (pasted below), Citi is offering a loan in order to finance a vacation. We all know financing a vacation is a horrible idea, but what struck me about their offer is how they worded it and how easy the loan is to obtain.

“A personal loan from CitiFinancial will help you pay for your time off without departing from your budget.” First, if you need to finance your vacation, your vacation is not in your budget. A vacation that is on credit is like a car that takes $4/gallon gas to run. In other words, every purchase that is made requires additional money to enjoy. Every cocktail has an additional cost, coming in the form of the APR on your vacation loan. Depending on how long it takes to pay off the loan, the interest on your cocktail could actually acquire interest – talk about a long hangover.

The other troubling part of this email from Citi, is the relative ease of acquiring credit. “Apply now and you could pick up your check at one of nearly 2,100 local neighborhood branches tomorrow!” Or “Less than perfect credit? No problem.” It is no wonder our nation is in the economic shape it is in today. People owe so much to so many different entities, there is not enough money for the basics, like a home mortgage. It is easy to blame the Financial Institutions for pushing bad lending products down our throat, like Citi has done here. It is just as easy to blame the irresponsible consumers for taking on credit they could not afford. More importantly, we need to start shielding ourselves from these tempting ads and start saving again. If you are paying interest and not making it, you will never have money. $