Credit Card Debt
A problem called ‘Credit Card Debt ‘
Credit cards are no more a luxury, they are almost a necessity. So, you would imagine a lot of people going for credit cards. In fact, a lot of people posses more than one credit cards. So, the credit card industry is growing by leaps and bounds. However, the credit card industry and credit card holders are posed with a big problem called ‘Credit Card Debt’. In order to understand what ‘credit card debt’ actually means, we need to understand the workflow associated with the use of credit cards as such.
Credit cards, as the name suggests, are cards on which you can get credit i.e. make borrowings (your credit card debt). Your credit card is a representative of the credit account that you hold with the credit card supplier. Whatever payments you make using your credit card are actually your borrowings that contribute towards your credit card debt. Your total credit card debt is the total amount you owe credit card supplier. You must settle your credit card debt on a monthly basis. So, you receive a monthly statement or your credit card bill which shows your total credit card debt. You must pay off your credit card debt by the payment due date failing which you will incur late fee and interest charges. However, you have the option of making a partial (minimum) payment too, in which case you don’t incur late fee but just the interest charges on your credit card debt. If you don’t pay off your credit card debt in full, the interest charges too get added to it. So your credit card debt keeps on increasing, more so because the interest rates on credit card debt are generally higher than the interest rates on other kind of loans/borrowings. Further, the interest charges add on to your credit card debt each month to form the new balance or the new credit card debt amount. If you continue making partial payments (or no payments) the interest charges are calculated afresh on the new credit card debt. So you end up paying interest on the last month’s interest too. Thus your credit card debt accumulates rapidly and soon you find that what was once a relatively small credit card debt has ballooned into a big amount which you find almost impossible to pay. Moreover, if you don’t still control your spending habits, your credit card debt rises even faster. This is how the vicious circle of credit card debt works.
At a time when American people are being asked to come to the rescue of financial services all over the country […] how can we say ‘we know that [credit card] practices are unfair, but you must wait a year to fix them?’” asked Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) at a Center for American Progress Action Fund event Wednesday morning.
At the event, CAPAF Executive Vice President Sarah Wartell presented a new report by Tim Westrich, “Putting Credit Card Debt on Notice,” which she said “offers technological solutions to help customers better manage their debt in the face of increasingly volatile market conditions.” Wartell said that by using technology such as text messaging—or a similarly rapid electronic method—a credit card issuer could provide consumers with helpful information at the moment he or she needs it most. The message, according to Westrich’s report, could provide clear information—including both the event, such as the due date, and the consequence for missing it—a late fee and an increase to the penalty rate.
Wartell said that this new method of giving better information should be done in addition to, not as a substitute for, efforts by Rep. Maloney to eliminate the worse problems in the credit card market through legislation. “In conjunction with legislation, these technologies could help stem abuses in the credit card industry,” said Maloney.
In December of last year, the Federal Reserve Board finalized regulations that mandated a number of reforms in the credit card industry. These reforms, however, are not slated to take effect until July 2010. Rep. Maloney has introduced a bill—the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act—that moves up the starting date for many of these protections to three months after the bill is signed. These protections include preventing credit card companies from retroactively …
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