September 4, 2005

Credit cards if used to their potential, are one of the great ways to pay for any purchases that you wish to make and you can pay for your goods from the comfort of your armchair, either over the telephone or by logging on to the Internet. They are great if you are short of cash until the end of the month when you get paid, meaning that they are a great option for short term loans.

These are some of the positives to owning a credit card, but these positives can and are leading to negatives in many people’s lives.

You see Drugs, Gambling and Alcohol are not the only things that can be addictive into day’s society. The points that were made above to point out how simple that a credit card can make your purchasing of goods, from paying for large items such as a new T.V to buying your bread and milk from the local supermarket, can also make it simple for you to fall through the debt trapdoor.

You see many credit card owners think that they are spending money that is not theirs and think that they can manage to keep a grip on their finances and pay back what they owe with the minimum of fuss, just because they look at the minimum payment on the statement at the end of the month and see that it is low and easy to meet. It is when you check out the remaining balance, is when you will see how much trouble financially, that you could find yourself in.

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A few things that you should ask yourself, to find out if you have an addiction to your, will if you answer YES to them, will show you that there is a problem and that you should look at ways of taking action from falling further into debt.

Do you stick to minimum payments?

A minimum payment is more than what it cost before and the more that you stick to the minimum payments the more the interest that will be added to your account.

Do you use your credit card to make withdrawals from an ATM?

Again you are not only adding to the interest payments, you will also incur a fee for the pleasure, this could be as much as £2.50 a time and in most cases interest will be added from the moment that you make the transaction and this interest will be higher than the APR that you get when you make a normal credit card transaction.

Do you have a wallet or purse full of plastic?

If so you could lose sight of the amount of debt that you are in, meaning that you could now forget to make payments to certain cards at the right time, thus being the recipient of late payment charges of up to £25. We all know that credit card issuers can give us excessive credit limits, but DON’T regard this as free money that you have to take them up on.

Do you only shop in stores that accept the that you have?

If so then you maybe paying more for goods that could be cheaper than a shop that doesn’t, what you should always remember, is if you don’t have the cash to pay for the item in the cheaper store, then maybe you should just walk away from the purchase altogether, as this will tell you that you cant afford the purchase in the first place.