So, being a bit of a personal finance junkie for a couple years, I was anxious to see the movie “Maxed Out“. I’d heard about the movie at the start of 2006, and had been waiting for the DVD since then. It seemed like it should have been out much earlier – having the DVD release be basically 18 months after the movie’s contents were filmed made many of the topical issues feel more dated than they should have. Just seeing Alan Greenspan clips made the film feel dated.
I really wanted to love this movie, but couldn’t. It was good, but not great. There was far more focus on the banks and credit industry than I was expecting. I was expecting instead some more interviews with ‘average’ people, going over their budgets, spending, etc., which didn’t happen. The majority of the interviews with regular people were primarily extreme examples – people with mental problems, suicidal people, and so on. I think it’s going to be too easy for people with money issues to say to themselves “I’m not *that* bad off!” and blame the credit industry for their problems.
Banks *have* become far more predatory and/or lax in their lending practices in the past 20 years or so, and that point is pushed home in the movie quite hard. Some people in their 50s were mentioning that when first married, they worked hard and saved but could *not* get a credit card – continually denied. This was in the ’70s. These days an 18 year old college student making $100/week can get tens of thousands in credit with basically no financial history whatsoever. The fact that banks end up losing some money in bad loans is their own fault – don’t lend money to people with no ability to pay it back. If they didn’t do that, however, they’d lose out on their most profitable revenue stream – fees and high interest.
It’s still a movie worth watching, but be prepared that you’ll see more on banking and credit industry practices, as well as a decent chunk of time on federal spending and bankruptcy laws, rather than focusing on individuals.
I think that the premise of the movie was to illustrate to people how the banks and financial institutions take advantage of the average American with there banking and financial repayment tricks of the trade.
Many people today are not aware of or are naive to the fact that the banks are indeed taking advantage of them to gain more profits.
Tri-Star Consulting Group, LLC through strategic partnership with United Credit Education Services and Financial Freedom International, Inc, provides credit education, credit restoration, mortgage and personal debt elimination (not debt negotiation or debt management) by teaching consumers how they can strategically repay there personal debt and mortgage and save literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest and in 1/3 the normal time.