Americans Are Now In Debt Over 1 Trillion Dollars To The Credit Card Companies
This post was written by Carmen Dellutri, Esq. Board Certified Consumer Bankruptcy Attorney, Founder of The Dellutri Law Group, P.A. and one of the founding members of the Debt Law Network.com.
I read a statistic this morning that made my skin crawl. The amount of consumer credit card debt in the United States has now risen to over 1 trillion dollars. Just think about that for a moment. One Trillion Dollars. (1,000,000,000,000.00). You may be asking yourself the same question that I am, What does this mean for the future of the United States, and, more importantly, the people of Southwest Florida?
Ever since the explosion of credit cards, store cards and gas cards, credit cards in general have become a major problem for many American families. Unfortunately, many people believe that they cannot survive in today's society without a credit card. Nothing could be further from the truth. The credit card companies and the issuing banks want us to believe that nonsense because of the profit margins involved. In 2006, credit card companies made over 17 billion dollars in penalty fees. $17 billion is quite a bit of money. This amount does not take into consideration interest. Whenever the consumer does not pay the balance in full, interest is charged to the account. Obviously, there are many Americans who are not paying their balances in full. You do not wake up one day as a country and find yourselves in $1 trillion dollars of debt.
Unfortunately, there is no cap on the amount of debt that the credit card companies will allow us to go into. Nowadays credit is accepted everywhere, and soon will be the major source of commerce. I prefer cash. I just hope it won't go out of style one day. I have no problem being the guy who wants to pay with cash, like the guy in the commercial.
Southwest Florida depends upon the tourists. There is no getting around this. We live in a beautiful place with beautiful beaches, and people want to be here. But, we are seeing a slowdown in the amount of tourist because of the credit crunch, and I believe that it is getting worse. Unfortunately, all of the economic data for the future is speaking of recession. In a recession, people will not be planning major vacations to Florida. And, if they do, they will be spending their cash as frugally as possible.
Sorry for the Bad News.
