Do You REALLY Know What’s In Your Wallet?

Humberto Cruz, writing the Salt Lake Tribune, makes some very salient points about how Americans view their relationship with their credit cards. Like others have said before, Americans seems to have a love-hate relationship with their credit cards. ”Just like interpersonal relationships, Americans’ relationships with their credit cards are both passionate and conflicted,” said Elisabeth Demarse, CEO of CreditCards.com.

Some recent findings from a survey indicate that many Americans are charging purchases they really can’t afford. They have no earthly idea how long it would take to pay back even a modest credit card debt. While most of them know they should review their credit report at least once annually, less than half of them do this.

Most also don’t attempt to better their credit card situations on any meaningful way, opting instead to keep what they’ve got and neither investigate any lower rate cards or to seek them out on web sites designed for this kind of purpose.

In my view we also seem to not to be able to differentiate between credit cards and debit cards. Using our debit cards for almost everything has made it all to simple to not think of the consequences when using a different card NOT tied to our checking account. This insidious similarity has resulted in many unplanned debts.

If we don’t change the way we view our credit card spending habits, then we may find ourselves doomed to live with the consequences of the resulting debts!