You Need to Cut Up Your Credit Cards Right Now

There are a lot of about credit cards, there really are. Especially if you’re trying to build credit! You need to have a credit history to do almost anything: buy a house, get a loan, get a phone plan, even get an electric bill set up in your name! It’s very important to always remember that with every upside, there is also a downside.

Credit cards are no different.

It seems like everybody has at least one credit card, and a lot of people have a lot more than one. In fact, the average household credit card debt is $15,355. It’s hard to believe! But it’s a scary reality.

What do you do when you can’t go anywhere anymore without seeing credit card ads or getting credit card offers in the mail or you in hearing people talk about credit card rewards? It seems like everywhere you turn, people are thoughtlessly adding more and more money to the almost insurmountable mountain of debt.

I’m telling you now, here’s why you need to cut up your credit cards today.

That interest is a killer.

I had been paying $100 a month to a $3,000 credit card bill mindlessly each month. It wasn’t until the end of the year that I checked my statement, thinking I must be getting close to paying it off. The balance had gone down $200. I hadn’t used it in a year! What was this sorcery?!

Interest. It was all the interest. For every $100 I paid, I was hit with $80 in interest. If something makes you stop using your credit card, let it be that realization!

If you don’t have crazy self-control, don’t get a credit card.

It is absolutely just asking for trouble. Unless you fully plan on being incredibly diligent about setting aside the money to pay off your credit card bill in full each month, having a credit card is just literally asking you to spend it.

There is a lot of damage that credit cards can do if you don’t have self-control.

They can sink you into a crazy amount of debt. Credit cards have you spend money that you don’t have. They encourage you to buy stuff that you don’t need to fill your house with stuff you don’t need. Even to buy a bigger house to fill with stuff you don’t need!

Using cash makes every dollar personal.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever gotten was to use cash instead of debit or credit cards. That helped me to realize the control that I needed to have in order to spend my money wisely without losing it all.

You have to feel the sting of watching your money gets spent. When you use the credit card, there is no sting. You even don’t have to feel it affect your bank account until the end of the month. If you’re trying to get your budget under control, that sting that you feel is a good thing. It helps you to know everything that you buy has an effect on your overall budget.

With credit cards, it’s too easy to become a statistic.

The average household debt is $15,355. How do you think each one of those households got to that point? Usually, it wasn’t overnight. It was a little more a little more each month. It was skipping a payment because you didn’t feel like paying for it this month. Little by little, debt builds up. Self-control goes out the window a little bit at a time. And before you know it, you, who said “I only have a few hundred dollars on my credit card so I don’t really have to pay it this month,” are looking at being another statistic.

Credit card companies WANT you to use their product!

Here’s something that I’ve always thought about, and bear with me here: if a credit card company was so keen on helping people get out of debt and pay their balance each month, how is it to you think that they were able to get celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Garner, and Samuel L Jackson to star in their commercials? It’s not out of the goodness of their hearts that they pay for these people! It’s because they have made enough money on interest and late fees and all other fees associated with it to afford to pay for these people.

If Jennifer Garner has a credit card, it’s cool that I have one, too!

The longer you stay in debt, the more money the credit card companies make… to be able to pay for celebrities… to tell you to get more credit cards… to help pay for more celebrity endorsements.

The bottom line here is self-control.

With or without credit cards, you need self-control to make sure that your money isn’t controlling you. The penalties with credit cards (late fees, huge interest rates, and more) far and away exceed the benefits in you can’t control yourself.

Now, I know that there is some good to credit cards! Some people swear up and down that they only have them to build credit, or for an emergency.

However.

If you feel like you will be tempted to spend and overspend on a credit card, just don’t have one. It’s a simple as that. If you find yourself going a month or two without paying the full balance, stop. Stop now. It is that important to make sure that you do not fall into a debt hole.