Low Credit Limit Credit Cards

Keep your credit card limits low, and you'll never get into credit card debt trouble.

I have two credit cards now. one for work and one for personal use.  Both have $5,000 limits and interest rates of about 7.15%  No miles, no gimmicks, no cash-back.   It is very hard to get into trouble with such cards.

It is tempting to have higher limits, and when I was younger, I thought, "Gee, I must have good credit and be going somewhere, because I had lots of credit cards with $10,000 and even $20,000 credit limits!"

 And this is not hard to do in America.  The credit card companies raise your limits, intentionally, to a point where you would be in trouble if you ran up that much debt.

You have to call them as ask them to lock your credit limit.  Do it.  If they refuse, find a new card.

The nice thing about a low limit, is that it is impossible to run up too much debt.  If you start charging a lot, well, your available credit drops, and this in turn, forces you to stop charging, or to pay down the balance.   It acts as a feed-back loop prevent over-spending - a positive feedback loop.

With a $20,000 credit limit, it is all-too-easy to let the balance get larger and larger and larger, like a wobbling washing machine, until one day you wake up and realized you have more credit card debt than you can ever pay off.

What is a good limit to have?  That depends on your income.   For anyone making $100,000 a year or so, a $5000 limit is reasonable.  For people making less money, the limit should be proportionally smaller.

Credit card debt is a game anyone can pay.  The middle-class person struggles to pay off $50,000 in credit card debt.  The poor person struggles to pay off $5,000 in debt.  Both see their situation as intractable.

Keeping your credit limits low helps keep you from spending.   It is a smart move to make, as it keeps you out of trouble
 

Oh, wait, you've decided to rely on "self restraint" to keep yourself out of credit card debt?

Smart move.  Let me know how that works out.   Sadly, I know all-too-well, how it does!

Raging Injustice? Perhaps. Perhaps Not. (Choices).

It is a raging injustice if you decide not to obey the law, not pay your tickets, avoid summonses, miss court appearances, drive without insurance, license, or registration, and just generally flout the law?  Or are your choices to blame for your situation?

A reader suggested an article and a youtube video about one of the latest (manufactured) "controversies" in the USA these days - the piling on of fines and fees for various misdemeanor violations, which can quickly snowball into hundreds of dollars and jail time.

Part of the problem, critics say, is the use of private collection agencies to collect unpaid fines, which result in rapid escalation of costs.  The reasons behind the use of these agencies are multifold.  The cost of collecting fees and fines is a significant burden to courts.  If people don't pay fines, it is hard to make them do so.  The only thing a Judge can do is issue a bench warrant, which then has to be served and the person arrested.   Police don't have the time or money to do this, so people are only caught if they are pulled over and someone does a "wants and warrants" on them.

By farming out collections to an agency, the court is freed up of a lot of this work.  The system of private collection agencies is indeed troubling - but no more troubling that the use of private collection agencies to collect past-due cable bills.  When you get a traffic ticket, you have to pay the fine - or else.  

The media loves to report these heart-wrenching stories about some poor single Mom who got a parking ticket that escalated into a $500 fine.  But what most of these heart-wrenching stories fail to discuss is the culpability of the people involved.

The problem is, these folks skip court appearances or fail to pay what are fairly reasonable and small fines - at the beginning.   As the article notes, this snowballs into more fines and tickets, as they now start driving illegally.

We see this a lot in our area, which is an impoverished part of SE Georgia.   But the funny thing is, the poorer the person is, the faster and more recklessly they seem to drive - speeding, rolling stop signs, texting while driving, etc.

A friend of mine is a local cop and he describes a typical traffic stop.   An old Cadillac with a couple of Rastafarians in it rolls by, with clouds of marijuana smoke coming out of it, like a Cheech & Chong movie.  There is a tail-light out and the registration is expired.

They perform a Terry-type stop and ask for license and registration.   The driver has a suspended license due to unpaid speeding tickets.   Oddly enough, the passenger has a valid license (why didn't the passenger drive instead?).   There is a pot pipe in plain view in the ashtray.   The gentlemen are asked to step out of the car and in a search subsequent to an arrest, the marijuana is found in their pockets.
 

Why were they driving in the first place?  They got high, got hungry, and decided to drive 10 blocks to get a pizza.

You can argue the system is "unfair" but when you pick away at the corners of these stories, you find out that the person involved made a whole lot of bad choices all the way down the line.  They chose to drive too fast, too recklessly, or too stupidly.  They choose to ignore parking tickets, speeding tickets, or other citations.  They choose to drive without insurance, or on a suspended license, or with expired tags.  They choose not to fix that broken taillight or headlight, which gave the cops "probable cause" to pull them over.

And why did they choose these things?  Often drugs are involved - the person in question wants to buy drugs and not deal with their responsibilities to society.

Why do courts pile on these fines?  Because folks like this just keep getting tickets and not paying them.   They don't show up in court, they don't respond to citations - they are basically above the law, that is, until the law catches them and throws them in jail.

And these are not "debtor's prisons" as the article states.  Geez, more left-wing nonsense.  They are just jail, period.   If you can't pay the fine, you do the time.  30 days or 30 dollars - it is as old as the hills.  And yea, to people without 30 dollars back then, it sucked.  Today it is 300 dollars.  Inflation.

So, no, I don't see a huge injustice here.  Maybe these private companies need to be reigned in somewhat.  But to say that people don't  have to pay traffic citations because they are poor?   No, that would be a bad idea.   We would just be enhancing the outlaw class in our society even further.   Traffic laws that only the wealthy need obey?  That makes no sense at all.

People make bad choices in life and face bad consequences.  I know this because when I was younger, I made a lot of bad choices and paid a lot of speeding tickets - and had huge insurance bills - at a time in  my life when I could least afford it.   I made "poor" choices, and the system was designed to punish me for making poor choices.   Today, I make better choices.

And it is a funny thing, it has been a decade since I have gotten a ticket.   No real big mystery, I just stop for every stop sign, obey every speed limit, and make sure my car is registered, insured, and has working headlights and taillights.

Actually, I take that back, about five years ago, I did get a ticket because my State Farm agent (boo!  hiss!) cancelled the policy on my car by mistake.   The fine was pretty staggering (and has gone up since).   And for each subsequent ticket, the fine doubles - into the thousands of dollars.   I switched to GEICO and kept closer track on my insurance polices after that!   It was a big stick that the government will whack you with.

Why do they do this?  Because uninsured motorists are a huge problem in Georgia, and they want to make sure that people have a strong incentive to obey the law and get insurance.   And if people don't want to obey the law, they shouldn't be driving.  And if they decide to drive anyway, they should go to jail.   Because if we let them go with a $15 fine, well, they would just keep driving and think the occasional fine was just the cost of doing business.

The folks on the left who "feel sorry" for these folks breaking the law make the argument that "well, people need a car to get to work!!!"  and I love that argument as it is the same argument that suburban teens make to Grandma to get her to co-sign a car loan for a new Camaro.

Yes, having a car is awfully handy in this day and age, but whether one "needs" one or wants one is not always clear.

We have  a huge car carrier port here, where Audis, BMWs and Mercedes are offloaded.  They hire locals to drive the cars off the ship.   One local man does this, but does not own a car.  He rides his bicycle to work every day, and then spends eight hours driving some of the most expensive cars in the world, and then gets on his bicycle and goes home.  Why does he do this?  He doesn't want the expense of owning a car.
 

Here on our island, they are building a new hotel.  Some of the Hispanic construction workers walk ten miles each way to work every day.   The staff of other hotels is shuttled in a van. 

The point is, owning a car and driving are privileges not rights.  And yea, it sucks if you don't have a car.   But the alternative - making driving a right and not a privilege and then allowing people to walk away from court appearances, fines, etc, is just not an option.
 

Again, if you peel away the layers on these stories, you find that the people involved did really dumb things - like not paying a small fine when they had the chance to.
 

It is like the guy who bounced a check at Dominos and got all bent out of shape when the collection fees and costs escalated to $750.   But whose fault is that?  If you don't want to be socked with a $750 bill, then don't bounce checks.  Like our Rastafarian friends above, he got the munchies and decided that, even though his bank account was nearly empty, sending out for pizza was a sound economic choice.   Hard to feel sorry for folks like that.  And yea, I use to do stupid things like bounce checks, too.   I learned not to do that, and the huge fees involved were one reason I learned this painful lesson.

And that is what is telling about ALL of these "injustice" stories - the reporter fails to go into detail about how the "victim" got to where they were.   They "failed to pay some parking tickets" we are told, but what is not told is the missed court appearances, the failure to respond to subsequent notices, etc.  By the time they are threatened with jail, the $25 parking ticket is now $500.   And this cost our court system well over $1000 to prosecute.
 

No, they are not "making money"  by putting people in jail (which costs the system even more money).  Rather, they are trying to get an entire class of people who just IGNORE THE LAW to pay attention to it.

While it may seem like an "injustice" to make people pay their traffic fines, prevent them from driving with no insurance or on suspended licenses, it is an even greater injustice to just let people off the hook for fines, to let them drive without a license, registration, or indeed, even insurance.   Why should the rest of us obey the law if a new class of impoverished people get a free ride?

There are two sides to the story here.   People need to be responsible for their actions.   When I was young, reckless, and stupid, I was punished by the law.   And I had to pay my fines and pay the insurance rates and risk losing my license.   Why is it today we somehow want to give people a free pass?

It makes no sense at all.   Increasingly, it seems, more and more people want to take what little responsibility is left in our society and abolish it.   Let everyone "do their own thing" regardless of how it impacts others.   And if someone wants to break the law, well they are the victims not the people affected by their actions.

But when you get t-boned by a speeding driver with no license and no insurance, and spend months in the hospital, maybe you'll change your tune.  Maybe there is a reason fines for this sort of nonsense are so high - and should be.  Maybe there is a reason we should put lawbreakers in jail.

What am I saying?   Nahhhhh!

Happy Birthday from the IRS! (Stepped-Up Basis)

What is stepped-up basis?

When you inherit a house (or anything other than an IRA or 401(K)), you get stepped-up basis.  What is stepped-up basis.  For that matter, what is basis?

When you sell something, your profit is determined by the "Amount Realized" (AR) minus the "Basis" (B).

The "Amount Realized" or AR is usually the sale price, or what you realized from the sale.  When you sell something, we call this, in tax terms, a "realization event".

The "Basis" or B is usually the amount you paid for the item.   But not always.

Thus, if you buy a little red wagon for $5, your "Basis" in the wagon is $5.  When you sell it for $7, your "Amount Realized" or AR is $7.

Thus, your "Gain" or G (sometimes called "profit") is:

G = AR - B

G = 7 - 5

G = 2

OK, that was simple enough, right?  You buy a little red wagon for $5 and sell it for $7 and make a profit or Gain of $2.

So what is "Adjusted Basis" and "Stepped-Up Basis" all about?

Well, under our tax laws, for the purposes of calculating taxes, we can "adjust" the basis in an item, based on a number of factors.  The most common is depreciation.

You buy an apartment building for $1M and rent it out for 10 years.  Each year, you "depreciate" the building by deducting 1/10th of the value of the building on your taxes (for actual numbers, see your tax adviser).   Why?  Don't ask questions, just take the deduction.  So over the years, you've deducted $100,000 each year from your income, which knocks down your income tax pretty good.

Four years later, you sell the apartment building for $1.3M.   What is your "Adjusted Basis" (AB)?   Well, 4x $100,000 = $400,000.   So your "Adjusted Basis" is the purchase price ($1M) minus the depreciation ($400,000) yielding $600,000.

Thus, if you sell the building for $1.3M (AR) and your "Adjusted Basis" is $600,000, then your gain G is:

G = 1,300,000 - 600,000 = 700,000.

As you can see, your "gain" is not a mere $300,000 for tax purposes, but a whopping $700,000, at capital gains rates (not ordinary income rates).   So you see, you can play games with this, and cut your ordinary income taxes (taxed at 39%) and pay at capital gains rates (15-25%) through the miracle of depreciation.

Note that you are not  forced to take the depreciation deduction but it usually is a better deal.

But what does "stepped-up basis" mean?

If you inherit a house then the "basis" in the house is what the value was at the time of death of the testator.

So Mom and Dad die and leave you their house.  They paid $75,000 for it back in 1980 and today it is worth $500,000.  Do you owe any taxes?

Hell no!   Isn't it great to live in America?

Your basis is "stepped up" to the value of the home at the time of death, and when you sell the home, you take home $500,000 tax-free.   Oh, so sweet to be middle class, no?  Rich folks, on the other hand, have to worry about the Gifts and Estates tax, which kicks in at $5M or so.

Recently, we came into a small inheritance, as a relative died and we sold their house.   The house was transferred to Mark and his siblings in 2005 when his Dad died.  His stepmother had a "life estate" in the house, and she died last year.

None of us thought about it at the time, but the "stepped-up basis" of the house was the value back in 2005 (when the market went berserk)  and the "Amount Realized" was the much lower price we received in December 2014, when the house was sold.

This amounts to a loss of well over $100,000, depending on how you calculate the basis value in 2005.  Yes, there are appraisers in Florida who will do an "historic appraisal" for you, if you request it.

So what does this mean?   Well, I am glad we did not file our taxes yet, as Mark now has at least a $45,000 capital loss to add to his taxes, which should wipe out most of his annual income, which means the $5000 I paid in income taxes to the IRS and the $1500 to the State will likely be refunded in total.

UPDATE 2020:  You may not be able to take all of the deduction in one year.  Instead, we were forced to take the deduction over several years as a "carry-over loss".  Consult your tax adviser for details - for this and all other matters!

So in this instance, not only is the inheritance tax free but since it was inherited at the height of the real estate boom, it is a tax deduction as well.

Of course, that sounds all fine and well and all, but if we could have sold the house in 2005, we would have realized a lot more money that in the tax deduction.   But the point is moot, since the stepmother had a life estate, we could not sell the  house.
 

And it also illustrates that you cannot deduct your way to wealth.   While you should take every deduction possible, usually the thing that triggers the deduction is far more valuable or costly than any possible tax savings.

But anyway, it was a nice birthday present from the IRS.

Class Structure in America

Are you doomed to live the lifestyle of your parents?  No, of course not.

Two recent articles caught my attention.  The first, from The Guardian a few years back, laments a "recent" trend that people are tending to date and marry in their own class:

The rules of discussing class in Britain are, pleasingly, very like those of cricket. Once you know them, they seem incredibly obvious and intuitive and barely worth mentioning; if you don't know them, they are pointlessly, sadistically complicated, their exclusivity almost an exercise in snobbery in its own right. Nowhere is this more evident and yet more tacit than in relationships: people marry into their own class. It's called "assortative mating".

Of course, Britain has always had a well-defined class structure, as anyone who has watched Downton Abbey or Sense and Sensibility can attest to.   In fact, their social structure is quite rigid and even codified into law.   You are either a Royal, a Lord, or a Commoner, and until recently, social mobility in this regard was largely non-existent.  So I think the idea that the Brits are becoming more class conscious today is kind of funny.

The second thing that struck me, was that this reminded me of a quote from those Freakonomics dudes who have a penchant for stating the obvious - and then drawing the wrong conclusions from it.  They note that (big surprise here) you are very likely to date and marry someone from your own social class.   Why is this?  Well it is simple logistics, really.   The person you date or marry is more likely to be someone you met at work, school, or other social activities involving someone in your social or work environments.

And note I said, "likely" as some folks will find opportunities with people they meet randomly, or perhaps today, online.   Or your social class may change.  My late sister, for example, decided to chuck her finishing-school education at Sweet Briar, and dump her MIT PhD boyfriend.   She got a job as a waitress and married a cowboy - a decision she later told me she regretted.  Sometimes marrying outside of your social class can be disastrous.

In other words, the fact you tend to associate with people of your own kind is not some amazing anomaly, but a predictable outcome.  And how we detect and perceive our own social class and type is really not hard to figure out, either.   Very (or not-so-very) subtle cues in dress, behavior, and speech, determine how we mark ourselves as being of one class or another.

In the 1930's and 1940's, it was typical for "upper class" people to talk with this annoying patrician accent.   If you watch old movies from that era, you will hear people (particularly women) talking this way.  Katherine Hepburn was a classic example.  How you spoke determined your social class.  And even among regional accents, the more pronounced the accent, the lower down the social scale you were.

Today in Georiga, we see this all the time.   The lower classes demarcate themselves with thick Southern accents.   More affluent Georgians speak with a less pronounced accent.   Politicians tweak their accent depending on which audience they are speaking too.   When giving a stump speech in Ludiowici, they pile on the Southern hambone.   When talking to prospective contributors in Atlanta, they almost sound like Damn Yankees.  No, it isn't just Obama who plays games with speech patterns, conservatives do it too.

I mentioned before about a friend of mine who grew up in a trailer park in West Virginia.   She wanted more out of life and she moved to the big city, changed her name and took diction lessons to lose the WVa twang.  And it worked, too.  Today she is a successful businesswoman, which she likely wouldn't be, if she kept her accent.

And it is funny, if you think about it, that it is the lower classes who adopt these thick accents, whether it is the "wicked good" sound of a Mainer, or the flat tones of a Bostonian, the various shades of Southern Drawl, or the nasal twang of a Jerseyite or a Long-a Islander.  In each case, these regional accents are usually spoken by the lower classes.

And if you think about it, with our nation wired with 24/7 cable television news channels, the folks speaking these dialects must realize that their accents differ from the standard Midwestern "norm" adopted by most networks.  They know what "normal" accent-free speech sounds like, yet these accents persist.  Why is this, in an era of modern communications?  One would have thought such accents would have disappeared long ago.

Again, I think it is a way for people to distinguish themselves - separate themselves - from others.   And this likely is a self-destructive force. 

We recently celebrated the anniversary of the march on Selma, Alabama.   One of the goals of that march was integration - of schools, of lunch counters, of all areas of life and all opportunities.   Yet, decades later, we find that self-segregation is a very powerful force.  Most high schools throughout the South have separate black and white prom nights.   Kids in the cafeteria sit amongst their "own kind" and woe be to the child of either color who tries to sit with the other.

In a similar manner, I think the use of accents and other social cues is a way the lower classes distinguish themselves from the upper.   You would think it would be the other way around.   After all,  don't the snobs in the upper class want to make sure that rednecks don't get into the country club?   Yet it is the rednecks who distinguish themselves and isolate themselves through speech patterns and accent.   And this goes for all the lower classes.  It is a fascinating phenomenon.

And all you need to do to "pass" for a sophisticate is to drop the trappings of lower class, rather than adopt the trappings of upper classes.  But of course, the poor person who does this, risks alienating the members of his own social class.   In Black culture in the past, this was considered to be "rising up above one's level" whereas today, it is decried as "acting white" or "being an Oreo".

Among rednecks, of course, it would be considered "acting gay" if you dropped your accent, clothing, and monster pickup truck.   And in both black and redneck cultures, the penalties for being different are often severe and in the past, even deadly.

The poor engage in a lot of self-destructive and self-defeating behavior, and this is one example of it.

A second, more disturbing article from MarketWatch, describes how differences in class affect the future of children.  And by the way, thank you MarketWatch for not equating the "American Dream" to granite countertops and stainless steel appliances.   The "American Dream" is social mobility, not over-mortgaged mini-mansions.

The article is alarmist, but it is also something the Freakonomics guys covered as well, again confusing correlation with causation.   The big shocker is, again, that if you come from a poor family you are likely to remain poor.   And in this instance, the graphs and charts use high school versus college grads to show that those high school grads are a bunch of rotten shitheads who don't properly rear their children.

Well, that's not how they put it, exactly, but that is the thrust of the message.  The reality is, of course, that if you come from a home that values a new snowmobile over  a new book, you likely won't advance very far in life.   My Mother, in one of her "save the world" efforts, worked with Head Start to try to teach kids to read and also to give away free books to young children in poor households.   Often, the books they gave away (Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World, for example) were the only book in the house when she visited their homes.    And usually these homes were trailers, with two or three snowmobiles parked out front, a bass-boat, a Camaro (on blocks, of course) and a monster pickup truck.  The value system of the poor is based on acquiring consumer goods - preferably gasoline-powered ones - over acquiring an education or advancing socially.

And it is hard, too.   If a kid from that environment professes an interest in education and learning, he will end up getting beaten up - often by his own parents.   Parents claim they want a better life for their children, but I can tell you firsthand, this is not necessarily true - at any social level.   Parents often feel threatened, not proud, by children who do better than they do, in life.

So, with all this doom and gloom, does this mean we are all doomed?  It is a popular trope - that the lower classes are reproducing like animals and pretty soon, they will take over the world.  This idea was put forth during the Irish potato famine in Europe, after the Civil War in the US, during various immigration crises in the US (including today), and of course in Europe today, with the huge influx of largely poor and unemployed Muslims.   They're going to take over the world!  Oh me! Oh my!

What these statistics don't consider, however, is personal freedom and personal choice.   As I noted in an earlier posting, people can climb from one social class to another - up or down.   My own family is a prime example.   Go back a few generations on either side, and you find utter white trash.  Zoom backward and forward, and you find near royalty.   Social mobility is indeed possible.   My friend from the trailer park in West Virginia proved this, as did my friend from South Philadelphia.

Is social mobility easy?  Well, the downward kind is - just smoke a lot of pot and you'll find yourself there in no time.  Whee!  like going down a water slide.   Going up is a lot harder.   Harder, but not impossible.

And if you think about this, it makes sense.  If it was easy to climb up the social ladder, then everyone would do it and there would be no poor people left.   But our social scale is like a casino - it is damn easy to get into a Casino (indeed, many use conveyor belts to drag people in) but damn hard to get out (exits are hidden to dissuade you from leaving).    Similarly, if you want to go down the social ladder, it is almost automatic - just stop trying entirely and indulge yourself with poor financial choices, self-pity, and drugs.   Climbing up requires an heroic amount of work, but it is possible to do.

When the Irish (which are some of my ancestors) came to the US in the 1800's in droves, they were at the very bottom of the social and economic scale.  And the largely Protestant upper classes in America were alarmed at how many there were and how they were "taking over" areas of our cities.  These are the exact same arguments made about Hispanics today - that they form gangs and are involved in crime, and have no morals or whatnot.

One-hundred years later, we have an Irish Catholic President - at least for a few years.   And the Irish, once outcasts, are now firmly part of the American landscape - and in South Boston, protesting against the newcomers to their neighborhoods.  The circle is completed.   From outsiders to status quo, in just a few generations.

So yes, on a statistical level, most people end up trapped in their surroundings and upbringing.   But on a personal choice level, some people strive to get ahead - and succeed.   No, not every Irish immigrant in the 1800's had a descendent that ended up as President.   That does not mean it is impossible, or indeed that it never happened.

The good news is, that on an individual level, you do have choices and since they are often choices your peer group won't make then making them is a lot easier.  I have mentioned before that if you live in a poor neighborhood, the best thing you can do is leave and go live somewhere better, even if it is a struggle to afford to live there.

Now some wags point out that, "Well, if everyone followed that advice, no one would be left in the poor neighborhood!" while other bleeding-heart types say, "Why should people be forced to leave their homes?" which falls into that emotional thinking trap of equating a place to live with a "home."

People in Ferguson, Missouri complain that the nearly all-white Police department is harassing them, and according to the Justice Department, this is true.   So why live there?   If you can escape, why not leave?  As a group choice or a societal choice, is it not an answer, of course.  But as an individual choice, it is probably the best option for getting ahead.   And is it a crime to want to better yourself?  Or should you stay in places like Flint, Michigan, and sacrifice your personal future to help a "community" that will not likely improve in your lifetime.

So what's the point of all this?  Perhaps none.   But perhaps that yes, social classes do exist in America (like, duh) and that we distinguish ourselves from one another on purpose - and that the poor go out of their way to demarcate themselves as being from a lower social class.   But most importantly, while the social class you are born in is a good statistical indicia of where you are headed in life,  it is not determinative, either.   If you are smart and you want to get ahead, there are opportunities.   Saying that the "American Dream is Dead" because of some graphs and charts, is to negate freedom of choice, and to denigrate the choices and accomplishments of those who choose to choose.

The SEX Trap

Religions, Governments, and Society have been using sex as a trap since time began.

The Sex Trap.   What is it?  How does it work?  The short answer is, it is how the powers-that-be try to control you by making you ashamed of your own innate and natural urges.

 

To parse this, you first have to have a general understanding of how your own mind works.  Most people don't.  Your mind is a neural network that is "programmed" by its environment, but also programmed by the powerful "initial conditions" that you inherit.

Simply stated, some of our behaviors are fine-tuned based on our experiences in life.  The brain is a neural network, that is trained over time, to provide certain responses as the result of certain stimulus.   But if that was all the human brain was, well, we'd be out of business in a generation or two.

Parts of your brain are hard-wired to resist attempts at learned behavior.   Your brain stem tells your lungs to breathe in and out.  Your upper brain can control this - up to a point.   If you try to stop breathing, well, Mr. Brain Stem takes over and forces you to breathe.

If you doubt this, then try it right now.  Yes, now.  Try to stop breathing.  Consciously, you can try to do this - and succeed for a few seconds or minutes, until a pressure builds up in your mind that forces the conscious mind to let go and let you breathe.   Even it if were possible to hold your breath until you passed out, the "passing out" would only be of the conscious mind, at which point, the brain stem takes over and starts cleaning up the mess you made.

In a similar manner, your sexual urges emerge from a very primitive part of the brain.   Without these, the species would not survive, and thus people with no sexual urges were quickly bred out of existence.  The urge to have sex - along with all the various "deviant" forms of sex - are perfectly natural.   Also perfectly natural is the urge to be abhorrent about sex.   The two opposite opinions can exist in the same time in the same brain.

This sounds confusing, but consider this.   In a typical civilized society, the idea of killing someone is abhorrent.  We abhor violence in any form, and killing is one of society's most proscribed evils.   But then war is declared, and suddenly, the idea of killing people is not only no longer abhorrent, but condoned and encouraged.   The person who does not kill in the name of their country is considered abhorrent - a coward - and is castigated by an entire nation.   Then the war ends, and the killers are welcomed home, but told not to kill anymore.   Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ensues.

Or take cannibalism.  It is one of the most taboo subjects on the planet.   But if you are a member of the Donner party, or a Chilean Soccer player who crash-landed in the Andes - or a boy stuck in a lifeboat with a tiger named Richard Parker, suddenly things change.   You do things you need to do, in order to survive.  And later on, maybe you deny these things happened, or blame them on an escaped tiger.

Or take incest.  It's taught in the Bible - and condemned there, too.   At certain times during the history of our species, I am sure that entire families, tribes, or civilizations would not have survived, if not for incest. Of course, when other options for reproduction become available, then incest is abhorred and castigated.

Sex - and the abhorrence of sex - are both present in our minds at all time.  The sex drive insures the survival of the species, that is plain and simple to see.   But the desire not to have sex is just as important, as any species that spends all its time having sex will surely die from lack of nutrition or due to attack from another species.   The embarrassment or abhorrence of sex is just as natural as the desire to have sex.

Our brains have the ability to keep two contradictory ideas in the same mind at the same time - two ideas in direct opposition to one another.  When conditions change, one idea comes to the forefront.   When conditions change again, we weight another idea with a higher factor - neural networks again - and the former idea seems ridiculous or evil.

And perhaps this explains the waxing and waning of homosexuality in human culture.  When cultures are well-populated and resources become scarce, perhaps the outlet of all this reproductive instinct (the primary network node of any brain) is diverted to non-reproductive activities.   In opposite situations, maybe the reverse is the case.   It is an interesting theory.

But beyond that, historically, using sex to control people has been a popular sport.   Everyone has sex drives, and if you can make them feel guilty about their sex drives then you can control their behavior.   Thus, most religions consider sex a "sin" and then go about telling you when and where it is appropriate to have sex.

The root message is, you are a no-good piece of sinning shit because of your innate drives, and if you just tithe enough to the church and pray all day long that maybe - just maybe - they might let you in their little club.

And what is amazing, is people go along with this line of bullshit.

Everyone has a sex drive, and yes, after you've had sex, it does seem kind of embarrassing (if you did it properly, that is).  So it is not hard to convince people that the strongest urge programmed into their brain is somehow wrong.  And once you can do this, you can control people to the nth degree.

Suddenly, ordinary humans are "sinners" and you, the preacher, can offer them salvation.

And sadly, many fail to see through this charade, and actually take this religious bullshit seriously and think they are somehow "damaged goods" because they have a natural sex drive.   There must be something wrong with me, they think, or I would not have these thoughts!

And what those thoughts are, doesn't matter.   The end result is the same.   We are shamed even for having "wholesome" sexual fantasies, even about the girl-next-door.
 

The minister rails from the pulpit, droning on about the evils of "sinners" and a young girl in the audience thinks, he's talking about me, because I have unnatural urges.   There must be something wrong with me.  I don't deserve to live!

And that girl tries to slit her wrists, at age 16, with her life ahead of her.  And that is a tragedy, because it is so unnecessary.    And that girl was my Mother.

Today, we have advanced somewhat.   Not everywhere in the world, or even everywhere in this country.   A lot of people grow up thinking that even "normal" (whatever that means) sexual urges are somehow evil or bad - but at the same time, everyone has them.  And the number of "Christian" ministers and right-wing Republicans who are caught with hookers or boys or in public restrooms, attests to this.  And perhaps pushing these sexual desires to the back of the mind and making them taboo serves only to make them stronger.
 
We still are in the slap-and-tickle stage of understanding and accepting our own sex and sexuality.   We giggle and get nervous even when the topic is discussed rationally.

So, what does this have to do with finances?  Just about everything.   So long as you go through life living a double or secret life - having sexual urges and then feeling guilty about them - you will be exploited in one way or another.   You will always be at the mercy of society and society's judgement, at the mercy of whatever religious blowhard decides to say what is "right" or "wrong".   You will always be exploited, manipulated, and marketed to - buying whatever Ramcharger big-dually quad-cab, diesel-powered penis-enlarger that they they can get you to buy, so that no one thinks you're gay.

So long as you go through life saying things like, "If my husband so much as even looks at another woman, I'll divorce him!" you are sure to be a lonely, bitter - and economically disadvantaged - divorcee.   When you try to negate the power of sex, or make it part of an ultimatum, you are sure to fail.  Because the sex drive is far more powerful than human consciousness.   Better off to embrace human frailty than to deny it.

It is like these priests, taking a "vow of chastity" - you might as well take a vow of "not breathing."  You can deny the lizard brain up to a point.   But eventually, he takes over, and the end result is, well, inevitable.

On the other hand, when you start to think about sex in the same manner as getting a haircut ("oh, is it time again already?") or perhaps brushing your teeth (a daily ritual)  then no one can manipulate or abuse you.  Because you don't feel bad for being human, and no one can tell you that you are bad.