Credit Card debt

They are waiting for me to fall big.

(to be filed under: "I'll give you this big, shiny nickel fer yer little, crummy nickel!")

I don't know whether I've got a little or a lot.

I would say a large credit card debt would be in the $10,000+ range. Am I being naive?

Fortunately, you become less materialistic as you get older. I don't need, like, every CD by every band anymore, plus I get free music at work.

Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that it's going to be very hard to catch up on it and keep paying the rent I'm paying, and living the lifestyle I'm used to (which isn't extremely luxurious, but does have its indulgences).

I originally applied for a credit card after attempting to reserve a hotel room without one!

Do you still have the Omni, Hanle y?

I am tempted to transfer the balance to those "no intrest "offers

Just check and see when the "no interest" term expires, and make sure you've paid by then, or you'll get slammed.

has it been everyone's experience that the "1-year introductory 0% APR" offers by mail are a thing of the past?

any and all credit card offers i get go in the shredder unopened, so who knows

Ts and Cs are changing pretty radically at the moment. I recently came across a card (MBNA) which rounds up any monthly interest under £1 to the full £1, which is effectively a £12 annual charge for anyone who pays off their balance each month.

So you're saying they round £0.00 to £1.00? Fucked up.

mbna/bank of america SUCKS
i need to cancel that card

we've paid in full for years (putting groceries on it to keep it active) but waited until this year to get a rewards card! all that free money/airfare down the drain. my fear of debt keeps me out of trouble nicely, other than having no diploma and no property :(

gff, do you have no cards?

If I paid in full, I would never be able to travel anywhere, ever.

i still get those offers. mainly chase and citi.

I have no credit cards, and I never travel anywhere, ever. I also do not have any credit card debt (and never have). Mixed bag etc.

I accidentally paid my last CC bill twice, giving me a $150 credit on my account. What do I do if I don't actually want to buy anything with that money? (I can assume I will be paid zero interest on it.)

Whenever I overpay, my account just has a negative balance until someone buys something with the card. It just gets applied to the next month.

Our last electric bill was -$79. I'm still not sure what happened there.

Tracer, the negative balance will hang around until you make one or more credit card purchases that add up to $150. Luckily, you can pay almost anything with a credit card these days, so you should be able to put a necessary expenditure onto the card and use up your credit balance without having to buy something you would not ordinarily have bought. Groceries, for example. Or utility bills.

You can call and ask them to send you a check for the amount you overpaid. That's what I did with one last month.

I've been getting a ton of 0%-1yr and 3.9% until balance is paid offers. For an itinerant fruit picker, I seem to have killer credit.

OK! I guess it was my fault for screwing up the payment but it is sort of weird that they "have" (x) amount of my money of mine that they can be, and are, lending out to other people and buying other debt and leveraging other assets with, willy-nilly, and I don't get a penny for this privilege.

milo I may do that!

"let them come get me"

you can have good credit and have manageable CC debt. though all you people that pay it off every month are very admirable or whatever.

Actually the CC companies hate people who pay it off every month and punish them with mediocre-to-poor credit ratings! My parents are very good savers and have religiously paid off their CC bills for decades, bought their own house, two cars, etc and now, in their 60s and 70s, have a sort of okayish-to-crappy credit rating to show for it.

WHich is what I console myself with after my innumerable late payments

tracer if your card has online banking, sometimes you can request a refund that way...i'm pretty sure BOA/MBNA has that function.

Whenever I overpay, my account just has a negative balance until someone buys something with the card. It just gets applied to the next month.

"someone"

i don't have that with HSBC - it counts as a "cash advance" and comes with a penalty of like $25. even though it's my money.

pursuant to this thread - why i am still going to download mp3s illegally

i think i will request a check and in the meantime rob an HSBC

what about if you carry debt but always always always pay the minimum or more every month, on time. and you started with good credit?

HYPOTHETICALLY

CREADIT CARD DEBT YYYEEAAAAAH

finally out from under the thumb of these bitch ass bastards and it feels SO GOOD

it'd also be smart, if possible, to take loans to pay down the cards, because it'd be shifting high-interest, high-risk, snowball-and-soak-you debt into a low-interest setting that's totally designed to be forgiving.)

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, December 31, 2009 1:38 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

weirdly this doesn't seem to work with people who run up serious debts unnecessarily. once they've taken out the loan to pay off the card, they end up getting another credit card and have to pay them both off. odd, but pretty similar to a lot of compulsive/addictive behaviour i guess. shifting cards into low-interest loans seems to be the just-a-half-of-shandy of the debt-addict - it gives them a taste of being "wealthy" again (ie, not hopelessly overstretched) and tends to provoke another spending spree.

xpost - yeah, I can see how that's not a long-term solution unless he's actually learning something or breaking bad habits. still, though, I mean -- I feel like someone should print something like this up and sneak it into his coat pocket when he's not looking:

                                                   CREDIT CARDS                    STUDENT LOANS
TYPICAL RATE                                           9-15                            4-6
INSANE DEFAULT RATE                                    25-30                           n/a
OFFERS FORBEARANCE?                                     LOL                           LIKELY
OFFERS INCOME-SENSITIVE REPAYMENT?                     AS IF                         POSSIBLY
HOW LONG IT TAKES TO "DEFAULT"                       ~1.5 MONTHS                    LIKE A YEAR
POTENTIAL TO TOTALLY RUIN YOU                          V. HIGH                      NOT SO MUCH

or well I guess that's more for subsidized loans, which I guess aren't the kind he'd be using, but STILL

Not many things feel better than making that last payment.

from what I have heard, you can negotiate credit card debt, but you are stuck with student loans, especially if the loans are through the gov't. If they plan on going bankrupt, paying for school on a credit card is probably the way to go. Although, obviously, planning on going bankrupt is a messed up way of living.

I'm getting confused why this question is asked at every purchase. The clerk can see that I'm holding a bank card, not discover or any credit card. What exactly is happening when I sign with my debit card instead of using my pin number? Are there hidden fees involved? Isn't this recent, that a bank card can also function as a credit card?

The question I forgot to state above is credit or debit.

Maybe I should have started a new thread for this question.

My wife swears that you are better off always using it as credit rather than debit, because some banks charge fees for hitting a certain number of debit transactions per month. No idea how true this is, but she always chooses the credit option when available.

When you sign a debit card receipt at a large retailer, the store pays your bank an average of 75 cents for every $100 spent, more than twice as much as when you punch in a four-digit code.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/05visa.html?ref=business

"To persuade the banks to issue more of its debit cards, Visa charged merchants for these transactions and passed the money to the issuing banks. By 1999, Visa was setting fees of $1.35 on a $100 purchase, while Maestro and other regional PIN networks charged less than a dime, Federal Reserve data shows. Visa says the fee was justified because signature debit was so much more useful than PIN debit; at the time, roughly 15 percent of merchants had keypads for entering a PIN."

I'm lost understanding Visa logic in issuing these fees for any reason other than making money. And I'm still confused if it's better for me as a consumer using my pin or my signature?

No idea. I think Tombot opinionized on this once, but I can't remember what he said.

VISA provides some insurance coverage for purchases

for debit card purchases too? in the uk, pin transactions are all but compulsory, but i guess visa in the usa is pressuring the retailers who don't move over to the new system. that might be because the pin system isn't necessarily more secure, but iirc it pushes the burden of proof onto the consumer if they claim a transaction is fraudulent - it's your job to keep your pin secret. whereas with a signature, they have to prove it was really you and not a forgery, so it's better for the consumer. that's my understanding, anyway.

don't know. no purchases in the US that require a pin go through as visa, they go through your bank, in my experience. visa doesn't do PIN here unless you are getting a cash advance or something.

nytimes seems to suggest that visa runs the system for your bank.

My wife swears that you are better off always using it as credit rather than debit, because some banks charge fees for hitting a certain number of debit transactions per month. No idea how true this is, but she always chooses the credit option when available.

― you gone float up with it (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, January 5, 2010 11:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

never heard of this at any of the big banks

I realized a few months ago that I have been accruing "Thank You" points for my Mastercard that I've had since college. I had like 40,000 of them. I cashed them in and go a Blu-ray DVD player. Free! I knew that running up all that debt and paying it all off would help me out one day.

credit vs. debit affects the retailers (they pay fees for credit transactions) but shouldn't make any difference for you unless you're paranoid about people seeing your pin code, maybe a few banks charge for debit transactions but i've never heard of it and i've always used small banks myself.

Man you have that dude call Suze Orman, she's got a new whipping boy. By which I mean she is always stanning for the youth to pay their credit card debts off with student loans.

i try to use the pin rather than sign, otherwise if i lose the receipt i end up losing track of purchases thru online banking: debit shows up immediately, credit sometimes takes up to a few days.

i've got a capital one card that pays 1% cash back on all my purchases. i initially got it for reimbursable travel & misc expenses for work, but about 8 months ago I started using it for literally everything except for my mortgage and my utility bill (but only because neither will allow me). I pay off my balance in full every month and have managed to accrue about $120 in rewards! FUCK YOU credit card companies!

Man you have that dude call Suze Orman, she's got a new whipping boy. By which I mean she is always stanning for the youth to pay their credit card debts off with student loans.

― girl moves (Abbott), Tuesday, January 5, 2010 10:54 PM Bookmark

Whoa, really? I came up with that shit on my own. I should write finance book with my own glistening face on the cover.

Make sure most of it is taken up by words though with only a wee truncated mugshot

http://www.cornerofficebooks.com/YoungFabulousBroke.jpg

I'm kind of o_0 at Nabisco's chart saying "typical" interest on a CC is 9-15%. I think its common here for a general interest rate on a visa or mastercard to be between 15 and 20%, unless you get one of those special transfer balances or a starter deal.

I;ve just moved 10k of debt onto a v low interest rate card - 4% for 15 months and then reverts to only abt 10%, and I'm gonna try and kill the debt in about 18 months. It seems like a lot, but I've never had any other debts or loans, so its not a huge deal.

I was pretty confused when I moved to the US and started using a basic debit card (check card) and kept getting asked 'credit or debit?'

Not many people actually asking the question knew what difference it made or what. A few times they accidentally put it through as credit and it didn't make any difference. I think it's if you have some credit scheme actually set up with the bank that might offer some incentives. I could be wrong though.

Oh and also randomly being asked for ID when using either a proper credit card or even just my debit card! For small purchases too.

i've got a capital one card that pays 1% cash back on all my purchases. i initially got it for reimbursable travel & misc expenses for work, but about 8 months ago I started using it for literally everything except for my mortgage and my utility bill (but only because neither will allow me). I pay off my balance in full every month and have managed to accrue about $120 in rewards! FUCK YOU credit card companies!

― you want a war on christmas i'll give you a fuckin war on christmas (will), Wednesday, January 6, 2010 12:12 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

I have done this for the past two years - just hit $200 in rewards and they bumped me to $250 (part of the t&c). never carried a balance or paid any interest. FUCK YOU credit card companies!

man, i guess that is one of the disadvantages of banking with a credit union - they're great to deal with over the phone and don't try to screw you, but they also don't give you as much free money....

high five! @ dyao

also the online itemized statements are a really good way to for someone lazy like me to keep up with and compare month-to-month expenditures. i can pop that bitch into excel etc. back when i was using my debit card exclusively my bank would just send me a janky pdf.

worth reading http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/05visa.html

“What we witnessed was truly a perverse form of competition,” said Ronald Congemi, the former chief executive of Star Systems, one of the regional PIN-based networks that has struggled to compete with Visa. “They competed on the basis of raising prices. What other industry do you know that gets away with that?”

i try to use the pin rather than sign, otherwise if i lose the receipt i end up losing track of purchases thru online banking: debit shows up immediately, credit sometimes takes up to a few days.

― DAN P3RRY MAD AT GRANDMA (just1n3), Wednesday, January 6, 2010 4:06 AM (14 hours ago) Bookmark

this isnt exactly true. debit txns make a real-time inquiry and credit txns dont, but while debit TENDS to post sooner than credit txns, it's all still in the hands of the merchant to report txns in whatever batching-structure they choose. you can overdraft on both, too. i choose debit, cause it saves the merchant fees, which seems cool esp in the case of small businesses that i like.

ha, Trayce, that 9-15% was meant as a rosy, best-case, good-credit-history estimate

or the 9 was, anyway

Ah ok, I was jealous !!

I am traditionally horrible at finances, but I decided to grow up finally last summer and as of this month, I have paid off $5k in credit card debt since November. Sometimes I have to remind myself that this constitutes an actual achievement. Maybe I'll go on an expensive trip to celebrate!

Well, after carrying a large balance for the first time ever, I have learned that the way credit card interest is calculated is fucking incomprehensible. Never doing this again.

What I thought I was doing was carrying a $2000ish dollar balance over to the next month, where interest would start accruing as of the day the payment was past due. Instead, I find out that they "average" my balance for the period, including purchases made IN THE NEXT STATEMENT PERIOD (i.e., which would not be past due yet) and charge interest on that for the whole time period. This is all rationalized by saying that the 30 day window after your statement is a "grace period" which you then no longer have once you carry a balance.

The way to get an animal to step into a leg-hold trap is to conceal it well and use a bait or a lure that it finds extremely attractive, placing the bait in such a way that in order to get at the it, the animal unwittingly springs the hidden trap.

yeah, i zero out the balance (usu less than $250) every month now.

How to game a trip to Europe this year I'm not quite sure yet.

Yeah I pay off as a rule. We had a bunch of large expenses relating to moving/home purchase and I thought we were cool to carry a little of the balance for a little longer, but nope. They did waive the interest charge so far when I yelled about it though. It's just pro forma now that you can yell a little and get what you want.

I thought Obama fixed this stuff? oops

why did you (pretend to) think that

had no memory of what was in this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_CARD_Act_of_2009

pillaging

People at Capital One are extremely friendly. But one striking fact of life there was how rarely anyone acknowledged the suffering of its customers. It’s no rhetorical exaggeration to say that the 3,000 white-collar workers at its headquarters are making good money off the backs of the poor. The conspiracy of silence that engulfed this bottom-line truth spoke volumes about how all of us at Capital One viewed our place in the world, and what we saw when we looked down from our glass tower. This is not meant to offer a broad-brush indictment of business at Capital One; it is hardly the only corporation that has been ethically compromised by capitalism. It is, however, meant to shine a few photons of light on the financial industry in a post-crisis age of acute inequality.

Sometimes at Capital One, you would be working on a Powerpoint slide that showed “chargeoff rates” increasing. Your slide would feature a bunch of colored lines: one showing that ten in 100 people who opened this type of credit card failed to repay their debt within the first year; the next illustrating how the same thing happened to 15 in 100 people the following year. A curious colleague might walk by and say things like, “Oh, wow, can I take a look at those curves?” Said colleague might then offer up some comment pertaining to the work they did downstream from these indebtedness trends: “That’s fascinating. Is this deseasonalized? Does the dollars-bad chart look the same as the people-bad chart?”

https://newrepublic.com/article/155212/worked-capital-one-five-years-justified-piling-debt-poor-customers

it definitely takes a certain type of person to "thrive" in that line of work

Capital One was the cc company that was ALWAYS soliciting at my university (before that was banned).

make yourself pony up a bigger-than-usual credit card payment by thinking of it as a "money move" ala cardi b

i don't dancebuy clothes i don't need now i make money movesprincipal-whittling credit card payments

My free credit monitoring report gives me a total of the amount of available credit I've somehow gathered and it's getting to "ball out and fake your death/declare bankruptcy in ten months" levels. Never gonna own a house anyway, fuck it.