Although it's not always good news, numbers can't lie. Throughout the United States, Americans are racking up some very unpleasant statistics regarding credit card debt. This trend seems to have begun in the 1980's, because it was during that decade that credit card use started to become more popular and eventually came to be a very normal way to make everyday purchases.
Additional Hard Sell Tactics
Another reason to be worried by the unflattering picture that such credit card debt statistics were showing is that the credit card companies began to do their best to find more innovative ways to sell credit cards to consumers and if you have checked your mail box, or watched TV or been otherwise bombarded by different marketing tools, you would realize the hard sell tactics that were used to get you to use credit cards.
Thus, the eighties saw a shift from the cash-based society towards using credit cards, which in turn can be attributed to the beginning of the information age. With more computers being used to do various tasks, it led to more people also using credit cards and according to some revealing credit card debt statistics of those times, there were more people using credit cards than were using checks or cash in a single year.
And, when people became accustomed to using credit cards, there was a subsequent rise in credit card debts as well and according to available credit card debt statistics, the average American had run up debts to the tune of approximately nine thousand dollars per year that were directly attributed to use of their credit cards.
Many consumers who found themselves deep in debt because of credit card use did so because of a misunderstanding of the process. They thought that the credit cards were connected to their own money that they already had.
This erroneous belief is not true in any way and is dangerous. The money used to make purchases on credit is that of the credit card company and it is your responsibility to return all money you borrow in accord with the terms you agreed to when your credit card was issued.
In addition to purchases made, interest also builds up in your credit card account, bringing debt to staggeringly high levels. The average interest rate on most credit cards is roughly fourteen percent, a rate that can quickly change a small credit card balance into overwhelming debt.
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