Never fear, accounting person is here.
(OK, so I have the same amount of wine in me that I did when I posted a few minutes ago. Or, perhaps it's just because I've been watching old reruns of Lost in Space and Dr. Smith was always saying, "Never fear, Smith is here.")
Um... OK, let's be serious for a minute. What do you think an accounting person would think of credit cards?
Does the government learn from the people or do people learn from the government? (Good point, rodandy. Sometimes wish I could leave reputation in these forums, but I see where that doesn't make sense.)
At any rate, I think the overall concept of credit cards is just fine. But like guns, it's how people use them. They can be perfectly safe, and they can be dangerous.
Being in the profession I am, having worked for a lot of small companies, and also just somehow tending to get into financial discussions with people (I wonder how THAT happens!), I am a little too familiar with bankruptcy and far, far too familiar over people's silly ideas about money. It makes me want to puke sometimes. Did schools ever start adding a personal finance class? They should.
I have one regular credit card, and two debit/credit cards that are connected with checking accounts. I have no issues with them. And I even use them quite frequently. Obviously, the debit/credit ones will come directly out of my account, but I have no problem with the "real" credit card either. I stick anything I want onto it, and I pay it off every month. Owning a house, many house expenses end up on it, like lots of trips to Lowes and Sears.
And I pay it off cause I don't charge things I can't pay. It's just a convenince to me, and certainly it's convenient.
But I also went through some bad times and discovered problems can happen to anyone. Don't ever want to be back there again.
The thing is, you can't get any credit without having credit cards or a loan or whatever. So you almost
have to have credit cards to get enough credit to, say, buy a house. And of course, online a credit card can become necessary. (Although a debit/credit card can work for that, for someone who can't handle credit.)
So the real problem is not with the credit cards themselves. It's with the fact that people (especially Americans) don't know how to handle money. Marketing is geared towards credit. It's almost like the credit card companies want you to go bankrupt or something. Even older people can be lousy about money. But I think we have a generation of people growing up that not only don't get that credit cards have to be PAID!!, but that also want everything NOW. There's no such thing as saving for something anymore. And not only does saving for something work better for one's money situation, it's also much more satisfactory to work for it and then finally reach that goal. Means nothing when you can get everything now.
Firmy (so is that your official nickname?), don't know what to tell you about this person you know. It's difficult to convince someone whose mindset is already there. People are not very good consumers. Make them listen to Clark Howard.
Just like everything else, I think it goes back to what you learned from your parents, and it seems like anymore, that's nothing.
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