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9 Comments to "More Gloomy Economic News: More and More Americans are Living Off Credit Cards"
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SearcH- EngineS WEB
May 11th, 2008 at
1:43 am
How much money do they waste buying convenience foods, buying latest fashions and gadgets, driving unnecessarily etc?
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Fritz
May 11th, 2008 at
11:00 am
The real question is how much do they waste in paying the interest on their credit cards?
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Morgan
May 11th, 2008 at
11:25 am
I guess its a good thing I’ve never had a credit card.
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Sleestak
May 11th, 2008 at
11:27 am
Not surprising. About a month ago the system that processed credit cards went down in our store for a few hours. The ‘debit’ function worked just fine but for some reason credit would not work. During that period it seemed that only a few customers out of many were able to pay cash from an ATM or use debit for their purchases. If they could not utilize credit, they opted not to pay at all and come back later.
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L
May 11th, 2008 at
12:54 pm
Not everyone using credit cards is buying unnecessary crap. Food today (even the basic stuff) costs more. Fuel costs more if you drive to work. Public transit costs more (especially in some areas… around here it can be up to $10 a day if you don’t buy a special pass).
There was news recently about how the median income of the middle class (in Canada) stayed basically the same from 1980 to 2005. And that’s at the same time that house prices in some areas quadrupled. So just because someone is using credit cards doesn’t mean they’re living large. It could just mean that they’re trying to keep a roof over their head.
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Dave
May 11th, 2008 at
2:03 pm
I’ll confess; for the last six months or so my wife & I have been buying nearly everything on our Visa card. But with good reason; the account was a promotion through the company that has our home mortgage, and for every $2,500 we spend on the card we get $50 towards the principal on the mortgage. No annual fee, and since we pay off the balance every month there’s no finance charge. It’s all a plus for us. With this deal and our normal spending, we figure we can rack up at least an extra payment in a year. And all principal off the top.
The key to using a credit card is to use it wisely, and not spend beyond your means.
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Barbwire
May 11th, 2008 at
10:11 pm
Dave has it right.
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Pol x
May 13th, 2008 at
6:52 am
Yup Dave has it bang on.
But the thing is, banks know people are not like that.
If we all did the right thing we’d be buff and toned and live til we’re 120 and ride bicycles to work and etc etc etc
We’re not, so they lay on the temtation and Wham they reap the rewards.
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MoonCake
May 13th, 2008 at
7:47 am
moral of the story: don’t get a credit card in the first place.
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