Credit card use slowing down
- Michelle Wood: SWCD
- October 4, 2009
- 671
The Federal Reserve said recently that revolving credit use has decreased by an annualized eight percent.
The forced reduction in credit card usage comes from several moves by card issuing banks, many of whom have tightened credit limits, raised minimum payments, raised interest rates, raised fees and have generally clamped down on credit issuing.
It’s well past time that these punch-drunk financial institutions of “free and loose” credit gained some common sense and really did clamp down. But now?
Gone are the days when we were accosted by marauding credit card issuers as we walked through an airport terminal or a local mall.
Gone are the days when they were thrusting travel mugs, teddy bears or blankets at you just to get you to spend two minutes filling out a quickie credit card application.
Gone are the days of mailboxes full of already approved credit cards.
We just had to call in to activate the accounts later.
Some kind of civility has somehow soaked into these former blockheads. The financial fiasco we have just come through (or are still going through) has taken a toll. Those idiots are gone and we have new idiots in charge now.
As a result of some of these changes, cardholders are somewhat voluntarily cutting back on their use of credit cards. If you call being forced as “voluntary.”
Recently, Visa Inc. reported that the dollar volume of purchases on branded debit cards exceeded purchases on credit cards for the first time ever.
Well shazam! Leroy, we got something right for once. We starting buying more with money we had than we did with money we didn’t have. What a crazy idea!
Credit unions and hometown banks are reporting an increase in consumer lending as borrowers are trying to refinance to get away from the rapscallion credit card issuers.
The card issuers have been raising interest rates and adding all kinds of fees to encourage payment and to make more money. Of course they don’t say that. They say they are trying to make corrections to poor lending practices of the past. Whose poor lending practices?
These bloodsuckers are simply trying to get new sources of revenue in under the wire of a new Credit Card Act that limits fees, rates and things, which goes into effect in February.
Honey, bring me another pill, my blood pressure has got to be through the roof.
Bill Weber, CPA, has been advising businesses for more than 30 years. He has served in leadership with Crown Financial Ministries and is a church co-coordinator for Financial Peace University.
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