Friday, June 27, 2008

Stop credit card debt before it begins

Using credit cards seems very easy but it can very easily get anyone who becomes addicted to their use in very big financial trouble.To sell the use of their cards, banks and credit card companies push toward the idea that they can make your life easy.
I agree that walking around with a lot of cash can be a burden. It can also be very difficult to dispute a charge that you wrote a check for. Credit cards become appropriate for such situations.
But using credit cards abusively will land anyone somewhere he/she does not want to be. The worst thing with credit cards is the interest rate they charge you while giving you the impression that you can take your time to pay back the money that you owe. Talk about the power of negative compounding: your interest gets added to the previous balance and that becomes a new balance on which interest is charged and the negative cycle continues. Try to pay a credit card debt, the minimum payment at a time. You will be dead before it is over.
So what are the alternatives to abusive credit card use? The following ideas can be adopted:
- Use the card only for amounts that can be paid back very quickly (within one month or two)
- If you absolutely have to use that card, it will help to use one with a low interest rate (do not use the 22.5% interest rate one)
-Use credit cards only for real needs and not wants and for emergencies not as a game that you play at the mall while your other customers and the store clerk are watching.

Be wise!

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