Compulsive Spending

I'm glad that compulsive spending isn't one of my problems. While racking up credit card balances may make it more difficult for your lender to lower your credit line, it isn't a good habit. In my credit card days, I noticed that if I got close to the limit, kept making payments and stopped using the card, the lender would increase my credit line. Every time.



That's one reason there's so much credit card debt in this country; instead of waiting for the borrower to request a higher limit, there was an automatic increase. And people don't think of a credit card company as a lender. They're a service-provider, enabling us to shop our little hearts out! I know several people who seem to do nothing but spend money or use plastic; in one case, it's always prefaced with the statement "I'm so broke." If you're really that broke, how can you spend money as freely as you are? Hmmm. Others buy things online, which I guess makes it less obvious, in that you're not actually going to a store. But how do you conceal receipt of packages? Yet another shopper was online and in the mall. All the time. Buying everything.



I've never had difficulty getting credit; I had a couple of store cards when I was younger. At a time stores wanted to increase the number of consumers with their cards, I had written checks and they called to offer me credit cards. I knew that obtaining credit wasn't always easy to do, so took the cards, one of which I rarely used. The other got more of a workout because it was from a store at which I shopped more. I closed my store cards several years ago and am unlikely to replace them.