Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/26/pclis.html
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Can confirm. So far I’ve been able to ignore the increases and steadily chip away at the core of my debts, but I’m one surprise hospital visit, or one lay-off away from financial doooooom.
It sucks.
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Debtors prisons will the next move by the 1%, don’t laugh, it’s entirely possible with tRump at the helm.
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Hospitals are already doing it. Can’t pay for your emergency health crisis? We’ll send the sheriff to pick you up.
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A friend just got a preapproved offer at a 36% rate.
They’re putting the loan sharks out of business.
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Preying on the most vulnerable – standard libertarian and neoliberal business status quo. And psychopathic. And immoral. And our tacit State religion.
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I’ve had this happen to all of my credit cards and has not been a recent thing, they’ve been slowly raising my limit for years so to me this isn’t new. Thankfully i am very careful these days about charging things on my card, most i allow myself to put on one of my cards is about 300-400 bucks and then i work diligently to pay it off as quick as i can.
I’ve also noticed that all of my cards have been asking repeatedly for my income to raise my limit, nothing out of the ordinary… I always decline to give it to them. However they’re supposed to stop asking when i decline but they always ask again not long after.
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You can call the card issuer and request to set your credit limit at a reasonable amount. There are plenty of companies to choose from if yours won’t do it.
Or, just ditch the card completely. It’s not like these things are helping anyone.
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Don’t let your credit limit EVER change your behavior of how much or on what category you spend.
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ALWAYS pay off your balance in full per month.
If you feel you won’t be able to meet these 2 rules, then don’t use a credit card.
If you meet these rules, nothing the banks do can get you into trouble; you don’t need to worry.
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Quite true, but the other 98% may well be served by enacting legislation to protect us from ourselves.
It’s always fraught - drug laws are enacted for much the same reason, but using legislation to protect ourselves from our less rational selves is a well trammelled path for both good and ill.
6 debt repayment options:
Um… have you met Wells Fargo? They are great at thinking outside the box for ways to fuck people over.
Not that I disagree with your points; both are the absolute ideal. But things happen, and that’s what they count on. Lure someone in with an introductory 0% APR, get them used to using it, something happens, put it on that card because they have time to pay it off, and then they can’t pay it off. It’s a trap, if ever there was a trap. (and I’m right there with the other suckers…)
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Your advice is really good and something I try to follow. These days I use a CC only to purchase things I’m going to need to buy/pay for anyway to take advantage of cardmember perks but I try to avoid carrying a balance at all possible, unless in an emergency.
I’ve also been in the cycle of debt to know how damn hard it can be to do this once you’ve gone past a certain point, and how the system makes it extremely hard to claw your way out.
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Nice to know so many people in this thread have never been poor.
Poor as in “work cut my hours back this week, but I still need to eat food, pay my phone bill and cover car insurance.” Often it’s either a CC or payday lender. So comments like “if you can’t pay it off at the end of the month don’t use it” really sound privileged to those of us who have been there.
The system fucks poor people over not just by making it so they can’t afford to use a credit card, but also that they can’t afford not to. It’s not about willpower or discipline or an ability to budget. It’s not about poor choices.
It’s been ten years since my income stopped being precarious. It’ll probably be at least another ten before I am not living pretty much paycheque to paycheque to pay off my debts.
So please, stop promoting the narrative that it’s about personal choices and letting the predatory system off the hook.
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They must be doing this across the board, then. I’ve only got one credit card , but they raised the limit from 2k to 18k over the last few years without me ever asking them to.
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I don’t think so. My credit limit has stayed put over the past two years even though I’ve stabilized and fully paid off my cards. My line of credit (used to get out of debt due to having a much lower interest rate than my then one credit card) even got cancelled due to inactivity, lowering my credit score! It was infuriating when I had to call the bank asking for a credit limit increase on my premium card so I could put plane tickets on my card and had to wait for 5 business days while they “checked my credit score” (load of crap… they wanted me to put the tickets on my crappy credit card with the high credit limit, no cash back and 24.99% APR).
In this case, regulation would not protect us from ourselves, but protect us from companies manipulating glitches in our psychology. The wonders of psychological manipulation is that it still works even if you’re aware of it.
I’m all for regulating sales of drugs or sub-prime credit.
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I quite agree, but I consider the “glitches in my psychology” to be me :-), so it’s mostly semantics (at least from my point of view).
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If we manipulate our own glitches, and we certainly can, then I’d say regulation is less desirable. If someone else does it, that is more problematic for society and deserves stronger consideration for some kind of mitigation.
I like to think we ARE more than the sum of our psychological quirks.
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