Credit Card Craziness. . .

Flash back to 1997, I had been in business for myself for almost a year and had gotten involved in Junior Achievement through our Chamber of Commerce.  Junior Achievement was a program that sent business people from the community into the schools to teach a practical business class.  They had lessons that we used and this was all on a volunteer basis.  I went into the high school once a week and taught a lesson in practical business finance to a freshman economics class.  It was a lot of fun and the kids were great.

One of the lessons I wanted them to learn was about credit cards.  This was the prime time for credit card companies to send out credit cards to entice people to join their company.  I decided as part of a lesson I would keep all of the credit applications I received for a month and total the amounts to show them how much debt they could be in if they filled out all of the credit applications.  I think it is very luring for young people to think they can buy things now and pay later or buy things now and pay forever.    I took them the stack of applications both my hubby and I had received and wrote on the board the amount of credit we could have, had we accepted all of those applications.  I was astounded, my total was around $350,000 and my hubby had $400,000+ in one month of mail.   The kids were amazed too, especially when I told them if we had used those cards we would not have been able to pay them back.   

Today they do not send those out with as much frequency, thank goodness.   They have picked up recently though and it is funny they do not have an amount of credit they are offering you on them anymore.  I am not sure how that works now, maybe if you work for a credit card company you could post and tell me about that.   

I am sharing all of this because I fell into the credit card trap in college and I was in debt when my dear hubby and I got married.  I did get out of that credit card debt but I did not truly learn my lesson.  It is so easy just to swipe that card and not think about having to pay the bill for several weeks.  If you use it often enough it gets easier and easier and the deeper in debt you become.   I did get better about using my credit card and I tried not to use it until I had the balance paid off but then something would come up and I would use that card again.  

Here is my closing advice:  do a little plastic surgery and cut those cards up and pay that balance off.  We do not use credit cards any more.  It is a great feeling being out from under that credit card.  I encourage you all to step out and take charge, no pun intended, of your finances and stop being a slave to your credit card company.   Good luck!!