Do you have any idea just how common credit cards are? Let’s take a look at a few statistics from the USA.
The average family carries a balance of between $5,000 and $8,000 on all their credit cards, depending on which figures you believe. Over $1,000 per family goes on interest every year. And that’s just the average – some people owe much more! Overall, Americans spend over $1 trillion every year on their credit cards, and owe more than $500 billion of it.
If debt continues at the current rate, then one family in a hundred will be forced into bankruptcy. Over 90% of Americans’ disposable incomes are spent paying back debts. Whatever happened to saving?
Debt Costs Everyone Money.
Literally billions of dollars are being used up on expenses that are only created because of the existence of the credit card industry. The weight of the calculations, administration and marketing needed to support the industry is immense – the average American gets at least one credit card offer in the mail every day.
That’s before you take into account the burden bankruptcies put on the court system, and the cost to the government of providing subsidised debt counselling. You might also note that consumers with more debt have less to spend – and when money isn’t flowing, it hurts the economy. There are very few industries or people that aren’t hurt by debt, at least in the long run.
Debt is Much More Common Than It Used To Be.
It’s not so long ago that being in even a little debt was considered to be absolutely terrible. When you wanted something, you saved up for it, and bought it once you had enough money. If you had bad credit, you couldn’t get a credit card at all. Go back fifty years and consumer debt figures were absurdly low, the same way they are today in most of the non-Western world.
In the West, though, the art of saving seems to be a lost one – almost no-one is saving enough for their retirement, and banks are having to offer ever-higher interest rates to get people to put money anywhere near a savings account. We have an ‘I-want-it-now’ consumer culture, and we’re willing to pay more than we can afford to fund our lifestyles.
Spending Isn’t To Blame.
Now that I’ve said that, don’t think that the reason you’re in debt is that you haven’t spent your money cautiously enough. According to statistics, it is very rare for people to get into debt because they spend their money frivolously. Far more people get buried in debt because they lose their job, or get sick – they take out credit cards to pay for basic expenses, and fall into the interest trap. Their debt spirals out of control from just a few thousand dollars borrowed to pay for essentials.
Most people have a reasonable sense of what they can afford, and won’t go out and use credit cards to buy things that they wouldn’t usually be able to pay for. The problem is simply a matter of people leaving their balances on credit cards for too long, not realising just how high the interest really is.
Moving Debt Between Cards Can Save You Money.
If you’re like most people, you have plenty of credit cards, and you have stacks of offers for more. The credit card industry is so competitive that, whatever card you have, the chances are that somewhere out there is one that would be cheaper or better for you – and you can change as often as you want!
Take Up Teaser Offers.
To try and get customers, credit cards are still offering massive discount rates when you transfer balances over to them. These ‘teaser’ rates will only last for a set period (check the terms and conditions), but they can still save you a lot of money – especially if you switch to another card’s teaser rate each time one ends.
Yes, this does mean applying for a new card relatively often – but if you do it online, you’ll find it’s quite painless. Is it really worth hundreds of dollars to save the trouble of applying for a new card?
Extend Your Offers.
You might not even need to move to another card to get a teaser offer for longer. If you phone and ask, many lenders will extend the preferential rate for longer, in an effort to get you to stick around.
Check the Small Print.
You might find that the ‘low, low rate’ only lasts a few months, and you might also find that it only applies to balance transfers, not new purchases. A common trap is for a card to allow you to transfer your balance of thousands at 0% APR, only to charge you 20% or more on anything new you buy with it. Of course, as soon as you ditch that card and move to the next, the new purchases become a balance transfer again.
A more nasty thing you might find is that you’re signing up to a minimum term to get the teaser offer – they won’t let you transfer your balance away again for a year, or even more. Avoid these cards like the plague.
Keep Track of Time.
Your card issuer isn’t going to go out of their way to alert you when your teaser rate is over. Make sure you keep track: make a mark on the calendar. Months can go by far more quickly than you’d think, and missing the end of the teaser period by even a day will mean that you’ll end up paying interest at the normal rate.
Moving Around and Your Credit Rating.
Moving debt around between cards often affects your credit rating in an odd way. On the one hand, it shows that you could be an unprofitable customer – after all, you change cards before they can make a profit from you. On the other hand, it also shows that you’re likely to take up offers that you’re sent, and companies tend to believe that they have a great strategy to keep you with them where others have failed.
In other words, some companies will hate you for it, and some will love you. Bear in mind, though, that the longer you do it for, the fewer companies will want to send you their very best teaser rates.
