You may think you're badly off but lots of others are far worse. Help them out. Every time you click on The Hungersite you send a cupful of food to hungry kids in the 3rd world. Do it a couple times a day. You'll feel good.
Your card dismantled Bits and pieces of info that you should know, but probably don't, about that fancy card in your wallet.
Silly question – we all know what a credit card is – don't we? Or do we?
Oddly enough many of us don't. So many people don’t really understand the concept of credit cards. They treat their credit cards as free money that is never to be returned. Thus all the discipline, which would otherwise have been exercised with spending hard-earned money, flies out the window
On the surface of course a credit card is a small piece of plastic that fits easily in our wallet and is always ever ready to help us out when we've run out of the folding stuff. Well, of course. it may be just a 'piece of plastic' but it's a very powerful piece of plastic – it's virtually a compressed form of ready cash. Let's define it as the outward manifestation or token of a credit system that allows us to borrow money from a bank or similar institution 'on the fly' so that we can shop without messing with those old fashioned greenbacks.
To get a credit card all you have to do is fill in a simple agreement with your bank or card supplier who will then smilingly and perhaps a little smugly hand you that wondrous scrap of plastic – the credit card. This innocuous little card contains a magnetic strip cunningly encoded with all your personal details deemed necessary to protect, not yourself, but the supplier.
You have a wide choice of card suppliers – it is after all a highly lucrative business for these people and there is no shortage of takers. They have become, unfortunately, household names: American Express, Citi, Diners Club, Discover, JCB, Mastercard and Visa card, all of which will be happy to provide you with their colorfully branded piece of shiny near indestructible plastic. In addition your local corner banks are in on the game, tied up with these major players and issuing their own cards.
Thus armed then you are authorized to make payments wherever and whenever you wish – for shopping at the local mall, buying your airline ticket to Europe, bidding in the auctions at eBay, you can use it with any retailer who has a merchant account with the bank or organization issuing the card. And of course, any of the thousands of ATMs that litter our highways and byways will happily disgorge real money whenever you feel like slumming with the cash crowd.
Trouble is of course, it is not, as many users kid themselves, your money. It belongs to the bank and, come the end of the billing period, they will, not unnaturally, want all or most of it, back. If you give it back to them in full, all well and good, you pay no interest. But if you can't repay it on the day they specify, then they will be somewhat peeved and hit you with a late payment fee if applicable and a sizable swag of interest. And, of course, still want the bulk of their money back. Well, banks are like that aren't they? And there's the rub as Shakespeare might have said if he'd had one. They tend in the beginning to lull you into a false sense of nouveau-richesse. However -- nouveau it may be but it's not exactly real riche. Illusory might better describe it. Take great care with credit cards – they have sharp edges.home
Though difficult to believe now, at one time many years ago credit cards were a luxury, owned and flashed around only by the rich and famous or businessmen on a magnanimous expense account. (Years later the same flaunting by the same beautiful people was to be made with mobile phones – strapped conspicuously to the belt -- remember?).
Be that as it may, nowadays both these accoutrements are no longer luxuries; in fact they have become necessities of daily living. And along with them - or at least with credit cards - has come a rather nasty little problem, to whit 'credit card debt'. If we are not too careful it tends to steal up on us unawares, to make itself painfully obvious on a regular monthly basis.
What is it and whence does it come? To answer this we need to know what happens behind the scenes, behind the counter of the bank or card provider. Your credit card merely represents the account you have with the bank or supplier. Whenever you use it to buy that latest laptop or pay for an expensive dinner or whatever you are actually borrowing that money from the bank and the bank will remind you of these payments, or borrowings, at the end of the month. The chickens - as chickens are wont to do - have come home to roost.
And these payments, aka borrowings, are what contributes to your credit card debt. Quite simple isn't it. Not exactly rocket science although if you let things slide it might need rocket science to get the situation back on the right track. But of course you will not let that happen will you? You may not but thousands do though. And therein lies the scourge of the ubiquitous credit card.
So, you pay the amount on your monthly statement by the due date and you pay no interest. However, if you have been a bit careless with your spending during the month, you may not be able to pay the amount so you will incur a late fee and lefty interest charges. Or you may be able to pay a little of this debt. That's better than nothing - the bank will not charge a late fee, just the interest on what has not been paid off.
So far so good. Some left still to pay, with interest accruing, at the end of the next month. When, oh dear, a bad month, a bit short again so you can only pay part of the debt again. And the next month – only part of it again...
Your credit card debit, like Topsy, grows. And grows .If you continue making partial payments (or no payments at all) the interest charges are calculated afresh on the new credit card debt. So you end up paying interest on the last month’s interest too.
A nasty looking circle is forming, made even nastier by the extortionate interest rates that are charged on credit cards. This interest is far greater than the interest on most other loans that the bank may make Thus your credit card debt accumulates rapidly and soon you find that what was once a relatively small credit card debt has ballooned into a large amount which you might very well find almost impossible to pay.
Further, if you don’t still control your spending habits, your credit card debt rises even faster. This is how the vicious circle of credit card debt works.
The moral is obvious isn't it? Cut your spending, leave your card at home and go back to using that old fashioned green paper stuff.
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Considering the mounting evidence, it would appear that the ever widening gap between rich and poor stems very much from their machinations.
Such questions back in the 'good old days' --a mere forty or fifty years ago -- would never have been countenanced except perhaps amongst the more rabid of rabid socialists. The more moderate of the population would not even have considered such a proposition.
Remember those days -- halcyon in retrospect? Your banker, ruler of his little domain in the High Street with his staff of four or five, the teller with a friendly smile for all his customers? Now we have to put up with the impersonal face of the ATM outside the door with its convenient slots for card and money. But no smile, no friendly word of greeting -- in fact don't you more often imagine a smirk? Banking has become as impersonal as using the public toilets.
And the bank manager himself, avuncular, rather like your local doctor, ever ready with advice, maybe not always welcome but always with your financial well-bring in mind. And a smile, if at times a little tight-lipped . And he was always there, year after year, seeming to be a fixture in his little back office.
And what of today? In all too many cases the little bank on the High Street has disappeared, yielding to some discount store or other, fleeting and ephemeral. You have to travel further to get your business done. And if you choose to phone you are answered by an impersonal multi-menued voice-mail questionnaire. If and when you get through to a real person you realize quite soon that your consuming concern is not uppermost in his mind -- he is more concerned with that of his own and his employer's.
You see, you are no longer a customer so much as a cipher whose only interest to the bank is in how much they can grind out of you. And, make no mistake, they will grind exceeding small.
A recent estimate by the government departments that concern themselves with this kind of thing, is that banks' fees have increased almost exponentially in the past few years and now average $200 per year per customer. This figure is for fees, and does not include their other myriad charges. The interest charged on their money-grabbing flagship, the almighty credit card, already high on the base charge of 14-15% can soar as high as a truly extortionate 50%.
As if this were not enough for these latter-day robber barons such interest in developing countries can skyrocket to a staggering and incredible 150 and even 200%. Aren't we lucky to live in a 'developed' country? Thus do the exceedingly wealthy become even wealthier and the grindingly poor become even more grindingly poor.
How on earth has the credit card gained such acceptance and ubiquity among even the most disadvantaged in our society? How can it be to the advantage of, say, an unmarried mother with three or four children living hand to mouth, or to a family below the 'official' poverty level? What on earth are such people doing with credit cards?
Perhaps because the banks have pushed them aggressively to the same extent as the casinos and lotteries have pushed, with their banal, wheedling advertising, their dubious claims of riches beyond imagining to these same people. The very people most likely to succumb to such claims.
Take meticulous care with your credit card. It may be difficult to imagine from our lowly standpoint but we count as nothing to today's bankers and power brokers. You well-being is not of their concern – it is purely your own. Use your card wisely and with extreme caution.
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