Monday, August 27, 2012
Credit Cards: Great Invention or a Dead End?
There are many inventions which have changed our lives in a major or minor way. Some of them have become necessities, and some others, just luxuries disguised as necessities. For me, one of the inventions which is a luxury disguised as necessity is the credit card.
Credit Cards are small pieces of plastic which allows us to buy or pay for whatever we want without money. We are not afraid of being robbed and it is not necessary to save money for long periods of time in order to buy something. Yes, they may be a big help whenever people needs to afford something without having the cash.
It sounds amazing, but we have to accept that not all people use credit cards just for matters of need. When we enter a store, we are banged by a spectrum of stuff which tempts us to own them: marvelous cell phones, colossal LED televisions, sophisticated clothes, luxurious furniture, etc. For the middle class (the bulk of the people) it is impossible to afford them with the salary they have. Any solutions? You know the answer!
Evidently, companies can’t lose; on the contrary, they have to take advantage of this immense of opportunity to make money: Interests! That’s the key. For instance, you use a credit card to buy a laptop. It originally costs 300.000 pesos. The cost is divided into 24 payments. Each month, because of interests and charges of the credit card, 7.000 pesos are added to the total of your monthly bill. At the end, you pay almost 168.000 pesos extra, apart from the cost of the laptop. This amount may be larger, depending on the interests imposed by each company. And you have been finally caught.
Is it possible to get rid of credit cards or have we entered a dead end? Consider that consumerism has become part of our lives.
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Unfortunately the society in which we live in not only “invite” us to buy everything that is placed in front of us, but also to make us believe that that thing is essential or vital in our lives. Nowadays, to distinguish between something we actually need and something that is an adornment in our daily life means a huge challenge. Buying just for the sake of buying is the current disease and the credit cards have made the task ever easier. However, I do not condemn the little plastic device for existing, it actually can help you if you really need to buy something important (as food, for instance). If you think on how everything works you will realize that it is a sort of vicious circle, in which, as you mention, the middle class don’t earn the enough money in order to pay the basic needs so they, in somehow, feel force to use this “aid” as they don’t have any other option. The matter here is that people have not been educated in order to use it “properly”, as we don’t identify our priorities and of course companies take advantage of our erroneous judgment. Our economical system have been design to make us pay their interests and to be heavy in debt forever.
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