The Three Most Common Reasons for Credit Card and Personal Debt


by Michael M Thomas - Date: 2007-01-25 - Word Count: 473 Share This!

Last year credit card companies earned more than $14 billion dollars from interest. That's interest that people like you and I are paying when we carry a balance from month to month on our credit cards. What are the most common reasons that people get into credit card debt? I will share the three most common reasons with you below:

Divorce -- this is a difficult one for people to avoid, but it makes sense. Typically what happens is that a couple is living a life that they can afford based on their income(s). However, when the divorce happens, you suddenly (in most cases) need two houses. That means two mortgages/rents where there was previously one. And one person is probably keeping the residence the couple had when they were together. That person has the full rent/mortgage to pay and now the other person has to pay for their new place. It's also very likely that the income is the same for both people. Thus your expenses have increased but your income has remained the same, so you end up in debt.Medical Expenses -- it is becoming increasingly common for Americans to not have health insurance. And in many cases this is simply unavoidable. Jobs that used to provide insurance no longer do. Other jobs that still offer insurance may not offer their employees enough hours to qualify for the insurance. The net result of this is that individuals are on the hook for their medical expenses. When something goes wrong, individuals have to pay for it. Most f the time, the only way to pay these expenses is with credit cards. The medical expense itself may be expensive enough. But the double digit interest rate that accrues against the debt is that much more painful -- especially when the medical situation prevents one from working.Living beyond your means -- the third reason is the most preventable, but the one reason that people just don't like to talk about. Many people who are in debt are in that position because they live beyond their means. In an effort to keep up with the Joneses or just because we're susceptible to the 3,000 plus marketing messages that we're hit with each day, Americans spend... and spend... and spend... whether we can afford it or not. If this is why you are in debt, you have to stop. You must learn to limit your spending and to live within your means. If you don't, you will never get out of the debt hole.Some reasons for incurring debt are unavoidable (divorce, medical expenses), while others are fully within our control (deciding to live within our means). It's difficult to accept that we are often the very reason for our debt, but to get out of debt and regain control of our financial freedom, we have to come to terms with this.


Related Tags: credit card, credit card debt, credit cards, credit card bills, consumer debt, eliminate debt

Michael M Thomas is an Internet Marketer with over 7 years of Fortune 500 management experience. Did you find these opinions on AdWords Confessions to be helpful? If so, you can learn a lot more about AdWords Confessions at my blog. Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: