Borrowers understand the problem with most solutions to out of control buy cloned credit cards online debts all too well – the useful programs are also the most expensive. Filing for bankruptcy can cost thousands of dollars in legal fees above and beyond whatever the courts might charge. Meanwhile, debtors that need the service (as you’d expect) are those least likely to be able to pay. Debt consolidation of credit cards, though, is surprisingly inexpensive and may be the best alternative for a number of borrowers drowning in unpaid bills. In this article, we’ve put together some cursory information about the credit card debt consolidation program. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Interested debtors should always contact a certified professional in their area for a consultation in order to fully investigate their options.
Merchants have extended credit to customers since the beginnings of western civilization, but everything changed in 1950 when Diners Club first experimented with an independent credit card. Department stores and similar operations may have had their own charge accounts with customers – some may have even had plastic cards imprinted to expedite purchases or further their brand – but Diners Club was unique in that their cards were intended to be used for a number of different businesses. Starting with just a few hundred friends and associates of company founder Frank McNamara – primarily salesmen whose vocation demanded regular dinners with potential clients – and little more than a dozen Manhattan restaurants, the Diners Club had landed twenty thousand members in less than a year who could use their cards at almost a thousand different establishments.
Soon, the same company expanded into charge cards that could be used at different sorts of businesses and, a few years later, American Express and other corporations entered the quickly escalating industry. What made Diners Club so popular wasn’t just the convenience of cashless purchases, the cards provided members with access to immediate credit from businesses that had no previous experience with the customers (or reason to trust them). Didn’t seem that big of an idea at the time – since, initially, clients tended to be well off and employed at large firms – but that started the credit revolution.
Nowadays, the ordinary U.S. household boasts four credit cards and more than a dozen cards of one sort of another (including traditional charge cards for a specific business and debit cards that directly access bank accounts), and, for the a nation as a whole, there’s over a billion cards currently issued. It’s hard to even imagine the lives of most modern Americans without their daily dependence upon credit cards.
However for all of their advantages, there are just as many problems that credit cards have created. Those same households have amassed nearly five thousand dollars in debt – a significant portion of the average American’s income – and personal debt levels continue to rise. It’s not a great leap to blame credit cards for the rise in bankruptcy declarations of recent years. With ever greater availability of credit, especially for those borrowers not ready to shoulder the burdens or those who have actively demonstrated an inability to handle the responsibility, our country is starting to drown in debt. Over a million personal bankruptcies each year speak to a national addiction to thoughtless purchases that shows no sign of recovery even as the economy falters and unemployment skyrockets.
Not only do we continue to spend like there’s no tomorrow, we seem unable to save anything at all. Nobody seems to care about what happens when they retire, but, even as corporations drop pension plans and the prospect of social security disappears, escalating debts mean that Americans can expect to have a healthy portion of their dwindling retirement spent on debt payments. Do you want to be a burden on your family or reduced to accepting charity stipends? This is a very real possibility for borrowers who continue to ignore their debts.