Credit Cards: What Do They Say About You?

The truth is that there are credit card users and there are beggars. Which one are you? I'd like to think that you're neither, but the reality is that most consumers have and use at least one credit card on a regular basis. According to The Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, 78% of Americans own a credit card (Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, January 2010).

Proverbs 21:5 in Old Testament scripture provides this wisdom:  Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty (New Living Translation). This can offer insight into the minds of credit card users and beggars. A wise consumer makes it his or her business to "owe no man", but a foolish consumer spends much of his or her life begging for opportunities to owe as many creditors as possible in order to enjoy as many short-lived luxuries and conveniences as he or she can.

Although I believe that debit cards can do the same, I understand that credit cards can be used as an effective tool for purchasing, tracking, and managing certain expenses. Mature credit card users are disciplined planners and executioners. They use their cards knowing when and how to pay their balances before they accrue interest and other fees. Beggars do not. Instead, they pursue bank credit cards and give in to department stores or other credit card offers without discipline, and definitely without a plan for managing the cards. They shop for the thrill and swipe without a purpose because they can.

Make no mistake about it:  if you keep swiping credit cards to borrow money you don't have the immediate means to pay back, you have become a beggar. You are guilty of soliciting external opportunities to purchase that which you know internally you are never planning to pay in full. That's not what credit cards are for, and that's not how mature, responsible adults are meant to live. Swipe if you must, but do so with a sure fire plan to pay the balance in full, and before your debt accrues interest. Choose (if necessary) to be a credit card user and determine to never ever become a beggar.