First of all let me say that I owe 4000 shares of Mastercard and it is a long term investment. I do not care if it goes up or down $ 40. Now some people do not pay their credit card at the end of the month, but I always do and I believe that most people when use a credit card use it along with common sense. Whatever the spending increases or not it is not my concern. Maybe some people charge $ 500 on their credit card and some $ 5 but, in my opinion, and it is just my opinion, there is a shift in how people spend money from cash to plastic. I see that shift increasing in the Usa and oversea and that is why I am long on MA No doubt that we are in a very volatile market, I am just going to go along for the ride, but I am confident that in a long time frame credit cards are going to stay and grow.
Ditto....this Xmas cost me almost nothing....card points paid for gift cards, watches, popcorn machines......no wonder the retailers are suffering
Congress didn't see anything except campaign contributions from the credit industry. The new bankruptcy law was written by MBNA (now BofA), who was George Bush's biggest contributor. Oh, BTW, they also invented the process of securitizing credit card debt.
Hell yeah, it's way more than most people think. I work at a bank and see it all the time. It's really crazy. In fact many of those individuals are actually OVER their limit.
I gotcha. I've seen a couple of these threads start here and always feel a little accosted like I've done something wrong. By using credit cards I receive income ($300-400 a year) and have literally never paid a cent to CCC. Plus I keep a record of every transaction to input through our budget. But now I get where your coming from, Some people are racking up the opposite income stream as I am. For their latte's and loafers they are pay hundreds and thousands of $ a year with generally no hope of paying it back. I think credit is like margin. It can cut both ways and most people don't deserve the trust to live on margin. JIM
Exactly. I use the debit card for just about everything, and I have zero credit card debt. The solicitations are gone now that I joined Lifelock, but I used to get two or three a day.