Using Credit Cards More and More

The Federal Reserve has reported that using credit cards to make payments is more prevalent than paying by check or cash. People pay their bills with credit cards. Groceries, gas, the light bill, etc. This is frightening to me. The average household has around $10,000 of credit card debt! That is debt that is unsecured and was used to buy things that could not be sold to repay the debt. This is dangerous debt. It is too easy to take the credit card out and make a purchase. If you had to pay with cash, you would not buy the same item you just put on plastic. Simple. The bottom-line is that you really can't afford to buy the item, so you should not buy it. The other horrible statistic that I just read is that people are paying less of their debt down over time. They make the minimum payments. So the interest that people are paying over time is eating away at their bottom-line. People have become trapped in a credit card nightmare that will not go away. So again, we need services like debt elimination, debt consolidation, and credit counseling. Sad, but true.