Comments on: Plastic staying home alone this holiday shopping season

By: BigPenny

BigPenny — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:02:37 +0000

lotteollie…
Amen, brother!

By: lotteollie

lotteollie — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:49:56 +0000

Guys, trust me on this. The people that read and listen to Jim are not the target customers for the credit card companies.

By: IamCOZ

IamCOZ — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:29:33 +0000

I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m amazed at the reasons stated for not using a credit card: “climbing interest rates on cards, lower spending limits,…”. This says to me that the folks interviewed were looking to spend what they don’t actually have. Christmas snuck up on them, I guess. I do believe some people are starting to step away from debt, though. Personal debt, at least… If enough do it, maybe the CC companies suffer some in the short term, but they’ll adapt or they will go away.

Or get my “rich” Uncle Sam to bail them out.

By: andante

andante — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:20:47 +0000

Is this a another ripple effect of the credit crisis on consumer spending? Consumer’s passion for not to speak of their ability to finance spending this holiday season has already been brought into question. Since it is known that people spend more when using credit cards, is this a further negative on spending that will further soften December retail numbers and add down draft to the economy and markets?

By: Christopher

Christopher — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:07:21 +0000

I don’t really see a 3.2% drop as that big considering everything happening, lot of which is brought on by the credit card companies themselves (trying to beat the new laws and such like protect themselves from defaults). And besides it might even turn out better for the credit card companies in the long run with higher interest rates to people that are better credit risks.

Personally I’m like the two above. I use a credit card for as much as possible because it pays me, not the other way around, but my main reason to do it is that I can download all the transactions into Quicken and have it track where my money goes. So I use them to be better financially, not worse. If they ever start to charge me I will switch to debit cards, which I can still do the downloading.