And what's more you commit to lend for a certain length of time - and you can only get your money back quickly if someone else is prepared to buy your loans from you.
As with a hybrid, you have to drive a lot to get your money back.
And we're going to get your money back, every dime -- each and every dime.
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And the irony is, is that you can actually get your money back on this.
"From the point of view of the customer, the only thing that matters is whether you get your money back, " he said.
So how else might you be able to get your money back?
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The pitch: If stocks do well, you participate, but if they crash, you get all your money back with a little bit of interest.
And if your kid doesn't go to a state school, you'll get your money back, with, for example, a money market rate of return.
You may have to try to figure out if you can get your money back for that resort you were going to stay at.
When you buy a corporate bond, you buy, in essence, the risk-free rate (Treasuries) plus something extra to compensate for the risk that you won't get your money back.
This leads me to the other advantage of bonds over bond funds: you can pick the maturity date and know with a high degree of certainty when you are going to get your money back.
While bond funds will help you reduce risk in your portfolio relative to the risks in stocks while you wait out the arrival of a future date, you only get your money back when you decide to sell.
With many prepaid debit cards, it would be easy for someone who found it to use up your remaining balance without getting caught, and you may be less likely to get your money back than you would be with a traditional credit or debit card that was reported as lost or stolen.
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Because we know there are things Congress can do, right now, to get more money back in your pockets, get this economy growing faster, and get our friends and neighbors back to work.
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But that option is worth less when bondholders must take a back seat to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and as Brazil showed in the 11 years it was in default until 1994, it can take years to get even a fraction of your money back.
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