A Time When There Was Very Little Debt

I am old enough to remember a time when they only thing you had a loan for was your home or you car. My parents paid off their first home in seven years and their first new car in two years. I remember my father stating that we would own our home in two months and at the time it seemed like we had been living there forever, but it had only been seven years.

I also remember the day their first credit cards came in the mail. They opened the envelope and there were two plastics cards in it. One said “MasterCard” on it and the other said “Bankamericard” (they later changed there name to “Visa”). My parents seemed confused as to what these cards were for, because they didn’t apply for them. They had had a checking account with this bank for many years and the bank just sent the credit cards out to there customers. That was the first time I ever saw a credit card.

In today’s society it is next to impossible to get by without a plastic card, whether it is a credit card or a debit card. You need one to rent a car, to reserve a hotel and in a lot of cases to write a check, but people do not handle credit the same way today as they did years ago when those cards first came out.

Today’s society lives more for the moment without considering the future as carefully as our parents did. Credit card debt is at an all time and is out of control. People in today’s society spend more time planning their vacations than they do their retirement. This is pretty scary fact, because the days of retiring with a company pension you can live on are gone and there are no guarantees when it comes to Social Security. Besides, if you think you can live totally on Social Security, you had better think again.

So when it is all said and done, I am not sure those two pieces of plastic in that envelope were a good thing. It all comes down to whether you make your credit cards work for you or whether you let your credit cards control you. If you do not use your credit wisely, you could be robbing yourself of a financially secure future.

Marjorie Salada is the owner of debtmanagement1.com, a website that contains information on debt consolidation, debt settlement, debt counseling and how to manage credit card debt.