We are becoming a cashless society and credit cards play a major role in this development. Banks are asking their customers to reduce the checks the write and use their debit card to make purchases. As the competition heats up to gain more customers to use their cards the deals come flooding in. We have all gotten the Balance Transfer Cards offer to move your high debt over to the new bank card. We have used to these our advantage and have managed to get a new one about every 7 months, which has allowed to push some higher amounts out into the future. We then take that excess money and reinvest back into our savings. Most people however are not that fortunate and play beat the bank game. They will use their 0% credit cards to push debt out further without the plan to actually pay it off when it comes due. This is what will hurt the American consumer and what banks are counting on. Once these offers end, the rates go through the roof. Most of the time you will see the rate on the back of the statement This can go from 18% to 31% depending on your state.

Word to the wise. Use the free money that banks and credit card companies give you but remember to only spend as much as you are able to pay off in a reasonable amount of time.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.