Bank Qualifies Crippled Beggar for Credit Card

The BBC is running a remarkable story about a beggar from Calcutta who is crippled with Polio and who has spent the majority of her life begging. Laxmi Das, 60 years old, started begging on the streets of India when she was 16.

Unlike many beggars, Ms. Das was wise enough to save most of what she obtained. Recently she took her years worth of savings, roughly 200 pounds of coins, to the bank and opened an account. I think this a great story but what really caught my attention was the fact that the bank said she now qualifies for a credit card. Are you kidding me? Hello! She is a beggar; she has no job. I know banks have to make money too, but this is a bit ridiculous.

Having said that, however, this woman does seem smarter than most of us, having proven that she can actually save instead of spending money frivolously.

24 thoughts on “Bank Qualifies Crippled Beggar for Credit Card”

  1. Wow! What a story. I think we will see more and more people putting money away in the years to come. This economic downturn has awakend everyone.

  2. I do not see why someone has to have a job to gain credit. If they have assets and an income then they deserve to have the opportunity to obtain credit just as anyone else. What bothers me here is that the lady was able to pan handle for enough money to save.

  3. i have no problem giving a little money to beggers. I am blessed that I am not in their position. GOD bless her.

  4. I don’t fault the banks for trying to hand out credit cards to anyone that they can, but I just wonder how they plan to collect on the debt if this woman were to default on her loan. She has no home mailing address or any other way to be contacted, so it just doesn’t seem like a smart business decision to me. Who ends up paying if she runs up a credit card bill and doesn’t pay it? To me, it seems that the rest of the bank’s cardholders will end up being the ones to pay in the form of higher interest rates.

  5. Yes if buyers would just save some money and put some money down we would be way better off. We get alot of buyer with no money and they cant save. Of course the higher cost of living is hurting the savings a little.

  6. I admire the beggar in this story. Many people who are well-off could not bring themselves to save. Well, most of the time it is because of choice.

    I wonder what would happen if she really got a credit card. She’s 60 years old, and a beggar at that.

  7. I recieve credit cards for my dogs consistantly. You see i use the dogs names when I fill out something I think is going to spam me or junk mail me. I even had one offer me a $10,000 dollars credit limit. Do you think they could put my dog in debters prison? JK

  8. @Cedar City real estate: That’s pretty funny. Not too long ago, I bet you could have bought a house in your dog’s name.

  9. @Cedar,

    Hahahah..that’s so clever of you to do away with spammers! Now, I am thinking of doing it myself. Probably I can get one for my cat. 🙂

  10. Thats so good. My 14 year old is often being offered goods and services over the phone. A bank asked if they could speak to him about a credit card and when I laughed they asked me if my Dad was there.

  11. Wow! On the one hand you’re happy for the lady who was able to save money and possibly turn her life around. On the other, it’s scary to think that you trust these banks to handle your hard earned money!

  12. If the banks were smart they wouldn’t be offering credit cards to people, they’d be doing huge volumes of micro-lending like the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and in many other creditors in developing countries (it’s even happening in some poverty-striken areas of the U.S.). Small loans made to people who belong to lending “circles” have been proven over decades to be paid back at a much, much higher rates (over 99% compared to 70-80% at regular lending institutions) than traditional loans due to a sense of duty and responsibility each member has to the rest of the group. Members don’t want to let each other down by defaulting because it ruins the opportunity for the rest of the members of the group to get small loans. This could be very lucrative for the banks if they had any imagination and starting administering such loans for profit. More importantly, it would make it possible for huge numbers of people to get out of poverty by starting small businesses (in some countries a loan is made for a sewing machine or cow, in the U.S. it could be a supply of umbrellas to sell on a busy street corner when it’s raining, a cart for distributing another product that’s sold on consignment, or just about any other idea you can think of). But the fact is that the U.S. banks are largely lazy and short-sighted and simply don’t care if the irresponsible loans they make are ever paid back. They’re just in it for their fat paychecks and big bonuses and figure the U.S. taxpayer will bail them out when things go awry!

  13. This story reminds me of the mortgage industry a few years ago. No Document loans down to a 540 credit score. Like this lady with no job and little assets, people were getting mortgage loans. Of course most of these loans carry adjustable rates, so now these same people are walking away from their home. And banks are failing why?

  14. Well the banks love to prey on college students why not open up a new target market the beggars. People think nationalizing the banks are going to save our economy quite the contrary when it was government legislation that opened up the pipelines to loan money to anyone with a pulse.

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