Hitting The Credit Wall

Personal finance is all about psychology. If you start carrying a balance on your card, you are teaching yourself to spend more than you earn. You will become accustomed to spending salary+credit every month (lifestyle inflation - where your spending increases in step with your available funds - is a real thing), until you hit the wall.

The wall may be when your credit runs out (and you can't get a new card or an increased limit), or it may be when your minimum payments have grown to the point where you can't afford them. Either way, suddenly your salary+credit equation will break down. You will have to switch overnight from living on more than your salary provides to living on far less, because your monthly income will have to be used to pay the money back as well as pay for you to live.

Adapting to a major lifestyle downgrade is really, really hard - so hard that even rich bankers and footballers get caught out by it if they don't get their bonus or retire from the game. Seriously, read up on the bankruptcy rate for retired sportsmen.

Never carry a balance on your credit card - it's the first small step along a road you never want to walk down.

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