No Short Supply of People Wanting Credit
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| Photo by kalleboo |
I was talking with the wife a few days ago, and the subject of performance reviews at work came up. One criteria for her is how many store credit cards she opens for customers for the year. This is usually the most difficult metric for her to meet, and she’s not aggressive with it at all because of our hatred for credit cards. However, she’s already got 40 this year and she only works PART TIME.
Why? Because there’s just tons of people out there that still want to open up a credit card to get that measly little 10% discount!
My reaction? I was dumbfounded.
Don’t people read the news? People should be learning from the mistakes of the rest of us in this whole credit mess. But NOOOOO. They’d rather save $15 on a couple things they can’t even afford to buy in the first place!
It just never ceases to amaze me how some people just can’t wait to get their hands on another chunk of borrowed money. The store cards are the worst. They’ll give anyone credit. As little as $500 for a credit limit, and they’ll toss in an automatic 25% interest rate right from the start.
It just goes to show that there’s no short supply of people wanting more credit.
Debtbeater
April 19th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Mr. D, I have taken advantage of these offers several times. It has never been for a frivolous purchase; I take the discount, pay off the card as soon as it arrives and rarely use it again. Frugal Babe posted recently about a home improvement project they had embarked upon (post entitled Paying for the Remodel on March 28th) where they opened an account at Home Depot, got a $200 discount on the first purchase, with 0% interest for 12 months, and she cut up the card as soon as it arrived. While I doubt many of the people applying for credit cards at Mrs. D’s job are employing the same thriftiness, some people do use this option to save money. The trick is use the card for your advantage and stop while you’re ahead of the game. Kind of like beating the credit card companies at their own game.
July 4th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Having credit cards is ok if people can discipline themselves to use it for convenience and safety of not carrying cash, and making sure they pay on time. Also…you can also make money with credit cards if you know how.
The problem starts when they get tempted to spend on unnecessary things and not settle full payment when the due date arrive.
September 24th, 2009 at 1:28 am
Unless you have a cash envelope system in place and you take the cash from the envelopes immediately after using the card, you *will* get sucked into spending out of budget and possibly into revolving debt.
Rule of existence.
The so called “safety” of not carrying cash is very expensive in my experience. The most I’ve lost in cash has been $80 (lost wallet before I started using cash envelopes).
The most I have lost from the so-called “safety” of credit cards is $21,000 of absolutely unneccessary debt.
Case closed. Cash is safer. Even if you lose your wallet you come out ahead compared to credit cards.
September 24th, 2009 at 1:30 am
What I am saying is it’s not “discipline” per se, but having an ironclad *system* that protects you. Personally I’ve tried most of the systems but the one that actually works, all of the time, even when you’re not paying much attention to it, is the cash envelope system.