“Living within your means” does not mean spending every penny that you make. It means spending LESS that you make and putting as much as possible aside every month to create that “nest egg” that will see you through the hard times. This means, shopping sales or, heaven forbid, buying things second hand (yes, it is possible to get quality second hand), spending less on food (eating out and pre-processed food are a lot more expensive than you think when compared with cooking from scratch), clothing, accessories, furniture, etc. For example, even with 3 adult males and myself in the house, I can still feed us all for under $300 a month. It is possible, and it really doesn’t take that much time.

Even as college students, we (my husband and I) have never once had to pay interest on our credit cards. I could not even tell you what our interest rates are. Why? Because we do not use our credit cards unless we have the money in our accounts to pay for what we am buying (a novel concept, I know). We don’t usually buy things we don’t need and, when we do decide to make such purchases, we discus whether the cost of these item are worth the time we would have to work to pay for them (the answer is usually “no”).

To be honest, the responses to the article demonstrate the typical American lack of responsibility. What you need to understand is that the banks and credit card companies are BUSINESSES. They will do what they have to to make their profits (if you don’t like this concept, use a credit union; they usually offer the same services and are more customer friendly). If you want to hang the banks for “ruining the American economy”, you will have to get a lot of extra nooses for the non-baking companies that also participate in similar acts (toss in one for the government, as well).

If you don’t want to be at the mercies of the Big Bad Credit Card Company, don’t put your self on the sacrificial alter. Don’t take a credit card so that you can have a little extra money. I you need a credit card to build credit, READ THE FINE PRINT. Discuss it with your banker. If they reserve the right to alter the contract, they probably will so be prepared. Save before the emergency. But, please, spare me the sob story about how these companies have done you wrong. I rather cliche…

Tough love. Learn it and live it, unless you want to live like Venezuela, or Russia, or North Korea.

u dont let a mountain fall on you and ask someone to take it off right? no one will have the ability….

If the transaction is not showing a debit, then there is no loan. The financial institution should not be charging you interest on a loan never issued. The lender is allowing the transactions to go through and pay up to this amount, without any cash showing in the transaction account. It is illegal for the finance company or bank to charge interest on money which they never funded. Not to mention, the interest rates. They charge interest rates which are higher than usury law limits for where the consumer resides. They should not be allowed to that either. IF the consumer signs the application while they are in the state where they reside, the law for that state will apply. For credit limit increases, there should also be a debit to the transaction account , and ledger which is equivalent to the dollar amount of the increase. None of the transaction accounts will reflect a debit being made to the account. So the finance companies must be able to approve, this cash was transferred to the account. If the consumer knew they did not have $500.00 they would not spend it. Next, fee harvesting. The FTC cracked down on several credit card lenders for fee harvesting, which is not listed in the new laws. Fee harvesting is where the lender has issued a small credit limit of $300.00 , and charged all of these fees to the account, where your available credit is now reduced to $75.00. This is more than half of the available balance. This is just another way to disguise an advance fee loan. Last but not least, Credit card lenders who have violated the usury laws and falisified ledgers by violating the general accepted accounting principles should not be allowed to report negative information to the credit bureaus or file a claim for the swap out insurance carrier. They should not be allowed to sell the debt to junk debt buyer or transfer those accounts to a new lender who has bought them out. They should be forced to write off those debts, and eat it. This is poor accounting practices and the consumer should not be forced to pay them for bad business. The punishment should result in the lender paying the consumer $1,000 for reporting false information to the credit bureau, $1,000 for sending the account to collections for invalid account, refund all interest applied to the account for the invalid loan. Notice, all the lenders who have committed violations, are now acquired by other lenders. Now those lenders absorbing bad debt. Now they need a bail out. They should not earn a bailout, unless they are going to clean up the mess, then they could earn a credit. But, there will never be balance until the lender is forced to due what’s write by cleaning up the practices, their books, and correcting consumer reports.