DEBT MOM WANTS TO KNOW: “Do you use your credit card to buy groceries or go out for meals, or pay for gas for your car?”

Having some amount of rolling debt, seems common. Ask around and most people will say they have bills to pay. I’m not focusing on mortgage payments or rent, or even car payments in this particular post, I’m more concerned with rolling debt on credit cards.

The typical American household has as average credit debt of approximately $7,500. And if you’re paying the minimum payments on that $7500, with a 20% interest rate, well, let’s just say that your $150 a month minimum payment is going to take about 5 years to pay that balance off, with interest. Do you even want to know how much interest you’ll be paying in addition to the $7,500 originally spent? Well that can be close to an additional $4,000 in interest.

Say it with me: Credit cards, credit debt, doesn’t make financial sense!

And yet, so many people live life with a card in hand. Ready to swipe at a moment’s notice. Every transaction, no money exchanging hands, just a piece of plastic, and maybe a paper receipt. And so, there’s no thought behind the spending, making it too easy to continue to swipe and go. And the debt continues to increase.

Gone are the days, when kids learned how to write a check and use the ledger to reconcile their funds. Hardly anyone uses a check or even cash at the grocery store. It’s all digital transactions, no physical monies are moving from one hand to the other. And the debt creeps in, and the balance creeps up. It’s a viscous cycle.

Are you stuck in that vicious cycle? Do you continue to swipe a nearly maxed out credit card? If so, you need Debt Mom.