Credit Card Debt Problems

Credit card debt problems surround and haunt millions of Americans who have discovered that the little tiny plastic cards have wreaked havoc on their lives through their propensity to grow larger and larger debt each month. Because it is documented by the Federal Reserve Bank that revolving charge debt has reached almost nine hundred and seventy billion dollars, each American has an average of twenty nine hundred dollars of charge card debt. This includes children, those with cards and those without. Since credit has been handed out to everyone like candy in a parade since the early nineties, the result is the financial meltdown happening in the last quarter of 2008. Those who had questionable credit histories were given sub-prime mortgages and coupled with the increased use of plastic cards for everything from groceries to golf; the results may prove to be too much for the country's financial back to carry. Enter the "Feed the Pig" campaign by the government urging the consumer to drop his credit cards inside a cement mixer.

When discussing credit card debt problems, the heart of the issue lies in the materialistic nature that many Americans have developed over the past one hundred years. Advertising execs have discovered that appealing to the baser instincts of lust, envy and covetousness in consumers opens a floodgate of irrational thinking and financial gluttony. In many cases, we are told by Madison Avenue that we actually "deserve" the offered product. And consider that "buy now and pay later" was once the mantra of businesses that worked on the assumption that a credit account would be cleared in thirty days, but now pay later can mean on or about the time a team lands on Mars for the third time. Credit card debt problems are really difficult to grab onto because they can either happen in a one day splendiferous shopping spree or like tooth decay over a long period of time. But in either case, it is the allure of the painless purchase that reaches into so many of our minds and messes with them. The solutions to debt problems are not fun, they are not painless and they are not easily attainable.

The two most positive of all the answers to credit card debt problems are often the ones that no one wants to do. The first one is to not get rid of, but sell a whole bunch of stuff that has been bought with the charge cards so start by making an inventory of everything you must have to exist, and no, the television and probably the computer don't count and if the meddling really gets personal, neither does the cell phone. Come on, how badly do you really want out of this predicament? So even if a person has to live the life of a monk for a year or two, isn't that better than drowning in a money quagmire? Put stuff on EBay, have a garage sale, get rid of the second car, the motorcycle and Jet Ski. Sell the golf clubs (this is really getting hard on the guys) and the hobby stuff and just admit that next time it will be different. The other positive step to solving credit card debt problems is to get a second job and put all of the money on the credit principle while still making regular monthly payments; groaning and moaning won't work here, it's a matter of the doing what is best.

The solutions now offered for credit card debt problems are very costly in terms of one's financial reputation. The first and most non-invasive answer is to seek help from a credit counseling service. These services will arrange with the card lenders to have interest rates dropped from thirty to fifty percent, freeing up quite a bit of money for the consumer each month. In exchange, the consumer sends a single check to the service which takes out about ten percent for its expenses and passes on the rest to each lender who then sends a monthly statement directly to the consumer in order to chart debt reduction progress. Holding to the program religiously, the consumer can be out of debt in from three to five years. But here is a little secret: the consumer can do all of this himself and save money that would otherwise go for the counseling service. If a person jumps ship and ends the program prematurely, the lenders will pour on the interest and things will get bad in a hurry.

The most drastic and horrible solution for credit card debt problems is bankruptcy, one not endorsed by this website. And by the way, it's sad to announce that credit counseling can have the same negative affect on a borrowing history as bankruptcy. Chapter seven bankruptcy wipes out most of the assets a person owns, but each state is different in what possessions can be kept. Chapter thirteen bankruptcy asks for lower interest rates and a long period to pay back all debts, driving the entire monthly obligations downward in cost to the consumer. Each legal filing has costs between one thousand and twenty-five hundred dollars and will sit like a stubborn and smelly mule on one's borrowing history for ten years. The heart of credit card debt problems may lie in our desire to obtain all the stuff that collects dust, sits in attics, rusts, falls apart and quits being shiny after a while. The Bible reminds those who are Christians that life can have a higher purpose when it says, " "Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have; for he hath said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you."" (Hebrews 13:5)

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