As I listened to the news channel yesterday an ad for Lifelock came on.  Now I’ve heard these ads hundreds of times, but for some reason part of the spiel yesterday caught my ear and made me pay more attention, not because of their product but because of the concept they were peddling.
  In the commercial it talks about how someone stole a woman’s identity and ruined her credit and THEREFORE, ruined her chances at EVER having the retirement she had dreamed about.  There are two different thoughts on this line.  1) being that she would some how be held responsible for all that debt—which is not true, it may be a hassle, but if you can prove it wasn’t you, you are not responsible for it.
and 2) the biggest one that caught my attention was you can’t retire without good credit.  That you must have credit cards to be able to retire.  What a crock of.  Yet this commercial plays hundreds of times a week and it is therefore being tattooed into the brains of the nation.  How sad is that?   Another was a print ad I saw on facebook today that says “It has a heart, Discovercard.com”  then it goes on to say that if you lose your job they will lower your interest rate or otherwise work with you.
 While Discover was indeed one of the easiest to work with when we lost our income, the instant lower rates and such did not just appear.  We had to miss x amount of payments, and jump through a bunch of hoops and then you are limited to taking one offer or another.  Plus Discover was one of the companies that changed the contract in the middle of the deal with us—after we’d been paying for awhile and with no warning.    I feel the purpose of this ad is to convince people that it’s okay to run up a credit card even if you think you might lose your job because they “have a heart” and will work with you with no hassle at all.  A very deceiving ad.
  Next on the facebook ads  was for women’s financial planning at wife.org it says “a man is not a plan” .  What century are they living in?  Since when has a man been a plan for the females of the US in modern history? I find that rather insulting.
First of all the name wife.org, as if only wives qualify.
  Next why would female financial planning be any different from male financial planning.  You pay cash, plain and simple.
  Then of course there are the Capital One commercials with the baby who has more since than the late night talk show host.  He simply cannot understand why the baby is saying “NO” to his credit card.  The inference being that you are acting like a child if you use a card other than Capital One because they give you so much back.    However, I see the baby commercials entirely differently than they planned.  One that the host is not as smart as he thinks he is by using a credit card, that the baby is in fact smarter than he is.
Two that he is in fact trying to con and bribe the child into using his card by giving her toys and other treats, but again the baby is too smart for him.  Much like their bonus points are a bribe and a con.  While I’ve never signed up for a Capital One card I have dealt with them for others and some of my credit cards were sold to them.  They are the second worst to deal with (With HSBC—Best Buy being the worst and Capital One just bought my BB card—Lord help me!).    So what commercials and print ads have caught your eye that you feel like are doing the nation a great harm?   Oh and one good ad I’ve seen on my facebook.  Eldred’s cheetah bumper sticker is showing up for sale on it!   Jan who can’t wait for the day she is free of the cheetah in OK.