by Clare La Plante

I have worked on and off for years as a financial journalist. And I learned as I wrote. In fact, writing about one hot-button topic — credit card debt — helped me to avoid that particular financial heartbreak. I waited until I was about 30 to get my first credit card, and I treated it warily, as though it were a wild animal. If I played with it too long or too carelessly, it might turn on me and attack.

I knew from my work that Americans carry on average about $5,800 of credit card debt. Paying off that debt with just minimum payments would take 30 years, with about $15,000 in interest. I also learned that we usually spend 112 percent more when we buy something with a credit card.

Yet even knowing the downfalls of credit cards, I still feel a rush of pleasure when I can get what I want just by handing over a piece of plastic. I feel immune, momentarily, from financial constraints and any other consequences, some overt, others more subtle.

Credit’s seduction: money buys everything
We have become easy prey to some savvy sellers. I’m as guilty as the next woman of scanning whatever magazines I can get my hands on — in the grocery line, at home when bored, or on trains and airplanes. These magazines contain images that I think don’t harm me, but they quietly instill a desire to look glamorous, thin, and exquisite. I start to feel a small seed of anxiety that tells me I need to buy the things that will allow me to do so.

I imagine in 50 years credit cards will be like cigarettes were 50 years ago, when doctors were prescribing them for stress. Now we know their immense dangers. Credit card companies give their wares out like candy — multicolored! So pretty! So fun! So easy. You can’t afford what you want? Don’t worry.

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Marie was always worried. She'd had trouble sleeping for several months; now she couldn’t eat either. She couldn't focus, so her work suffered, and that increased her stress. She began to resent her friends and their focus on money, expensive cars, and expensive clothes. Every weekend her friends wanted to go to the hot new (and expensive) club. The kind of car she drove and the kind of purse she carried seemed to be more important than anything else about her. Her friends wondered why she seemed angry all the time — and she was drinking too much.

What they didn’t know, what Marie was ashamed to tell them, was she was overwhelmed with credit card debt. 

She felt cornered — trapped with no way out of debt. The credit card companies' empty promises that they could give her everything she wanted had instead enslaved Marie, leaving her feeling desperate and hopeless.  

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