1. More Credit-Card Debt Needed

    Last week we established that debt lifts young folks’ self esteem. The next step along this ridiculous path, of course, is that our struggling economy needs — wait for it — more credit-card debt.

    USA Today: More Credit Card Debt Might Be Good…

    I find this line of thinking fascinating, really. No one has any money; no one has any savings to speak of; no one is spending; thus, the economic recovery is faltering. The answer? More debt. That’s what it’ll take to get people spending now.

    Forget saving money and slowly repairing Joe Sixpack’s household balance sheet, so recently decimated by house-price declines and more than ten years of rollercoastering stock markets. No, what’s important is that those credit cards come back out and start lighting up cash registers again.

    Yeah, that’s the ticket.

    And I’m particularly enthralled with this last chunk of the article. Here we’re introduced to a Houston couple who’ve decided, apparently, that carrying $15k in plasti-debt is no reason to not “go get some stuff” again:

    Some are loosening up. Amy and Brian Stonesifer of Houston halved their $30,000 in credit card balances the past year after their interest rates soared and Amy, 45, began worrying about her job security at a promotions firm. But after a year of scrimping, they recently charged new clothes, a grill and other non-essential goods. “We just got tired of not having things,” she says.

    Only in America would you find someone who’d rung up $30k in credit-card debt lamenting the sad, sad state of “not having things.”

    My question: Which one of Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps says to reduce your credit-card debt by half — to a level that’s still five digits’ worth, mind you — and then go out and charge a grill and some Dockers at Target?

    Hmmph. I totally missed that one.


  2. 2 Responses to "More Credit-Card Debt Needed" ...

    1. On June 19, 2011 @ 6:29 pm,
      Mike wrote:
      #1
       



      this just goes to show that we learn nothing from history

       

       

    2. On June 22, 2011 @ 12:05 pm,
      SPJ wrote:
      #2
       



      Wow. I am simply speechless. I mean, I know people out there think like this but, it’s just so frightening to read it. I guess for some, it takes a huge emergency for the light to finally click. Just glad my light clicked before something terrible happened.

       

       

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