You’re pre-approved! No interest until 2011! Improve your credit score today!
Credit card offers can be pretty tempting, especially at this time of year. As the holidays near, most people cringe at the thought of emptying their wallet to pay for presents and party supplies. Why pay all that money now when you can charge it and pay for it later? The truth is, anyone who knows the state of our nation’s economic crisis knows exactly why it is better to avoid credit this Christmas.
You can compare applying for a credit card to applying for a loan on a house. Many homeowners in the past have been tempted by the idea of ‘get now, pay later’. They received loans to pay for their houses, moved in and made their houses homes, then found out that they were unable to pay back loans that they shouldn’t have been eligible to receive in the first place.
The same thing happens with credit cards. That idea of ‘get now, pay later’ is very appealing, especially because of the way credit card companies advertise. It isn’t difficult to get a credit card. Companies want you to use that card to buy things, stimulate our economy, and later charge you ridiculous amounts of interest, sometimes regardless of your credit history. Credit card companies don’t know if you can afford to pay them back, and they don’t care. You yourself may not know if you can afford to pay them back. The problem with “get now, pay later’ is that you don’t know what your financial situation will be like ‘later.’ With the economy the way it is today, absolute financial security doesn’t exist, at least not for the majority of people.
So no matter how many credit card offers you receive in the mail, do your best to avoid the temptation of their optimistic advertising. This isn’t the time to be optimistic about finances. This is the time to be realistic. You know what you can and cannot afford, and so do most of the people that you will be buying presents for. They’ll understand if you spend less this year, and you’ll have the luxury of knowing that you can get it now and not have to pay later.