Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Credit Card Debt Statistics: The Picture Is Far From Satisfactory

By William Blake


Unfortunately, the sad truth is that figures do not ever lie and when things are not going the way that they should be they can make one feel very insecure and result in much reason to be concerned. This is what is happening in the United States, where it seems that Americans are increasingly becoming burdened by debts, and credit card debt statistics show that this trend has been steadily rising ever since the eighties, because that was the period when credit card usage increased considerably and was fast becoming the normal mode of transacting purchases and sales.

Additional Hard Sell Tactics

As reported statistics regarding credit card debt got worse and worse, credit card companies went on the offensive. They started to produce lots of advertisements, trying to entice new customers. Hard sell tactics started being applied and offers for credit cards now show up on TV and in the mail.

As these advertisements began to affect consumers, cash became a less popular way to make purchases, and thus, at least partially, credit cards led to the rise of information age. When computers took hold in society, so did credit cards. It also led to the less than desirable rate of debt that statistics now present, since during the 1980's people used cash and checks less than credit cards.

And, when people became accustomed to using credit cards, there was a subsequent rise in credit card debts as well and according to available credit card debt statistics, the average American had run up debts to the tune of approximately nine thousand dollars per year that were directly attributed to use of their credit cards.

Many consumers who found themselves deep in debt because of credit card use did so because of a misunderstanding of the process. They thought that the credit cards were connected to their own money that they already had.

However, the truth is that the money that you spend when using your credit card actually belongs to the credit card company, who are actually just lending you the money with the condition that you need to pay it back.

What's more, such lending has an average rate of interest attached to using your credit card that works out to about fourteen percent, which anyone will tell you are a pretty steep rate of interest.

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