Missouri Illinois Bankruptcy Attorney Foreclosure Reposession of Car

How We Can Help you

Bankruptcy Blog

Library

Credit Card Crunch Might Be Good For You

The Castle Law Office is known throughout the St. Louis area for helping people who are suffering under the weight of debt file for bankruptcy in ways that actually benefit their financial health. Most Americans are only one paycheck away from financial disaster. All it takes is one accident, one illness or one job layoff, and with the economy in its current downward spin, it doesn’t take much to put you in a financial hole that will be impossible to climb out of. If you or a loved one in the St. Louis area is considering filing for bankruptcy, contact the Castle Law Office for a free legal consultation today.

“After years of flooding Americans with credit card offers and sky-high credit lines, lenders are sharply curtailing both, just as an eroding economy squeezes consumers.

The pullback is affecting even creditworthy consumers and threatens an already beleaguered banking industry with another wave of heavy losses after an era in which it reaped near record gains from the business of easy credit that it helped create.” –New York Times, 10/28/08

It’s hard to feel sympathy for an industry that made billions off of making credit available to everyone, whether they deserved it or not. And the word “cheap” hardly applies to the sort of credit that was being offered to your average consumer. In the fine print of almost every single credit card contract were things like adjustable rates which could go up whenever they felt like it, the ability to raise your rates if you were late for a payment for something that wasn’t even related to the credit card like your electricity bill, the right to put your monthly payment towards the part of your debt that had the lower interest rate so they could make even more off of you, and the right to charge you retroactively in multiple month billing cycles.

There aren’t many of us crying in our beer for the misfortunes of Capital One.

As a result of this down economy, credit card companies are finally being a lot more sensible about to whom they give credit cards. Capital One, Chase, and even Target are being a lot smarter about issuing credit cards to practically anyone who wants one. The booths that offer you a credit card featuring your favorite team’s logo on it will probably be a thing of the past. Likewise the folks that offer your teenagers high interest credit cards along with Frisbees and t-shirts the second that they step onto their college campuses for the first time.

We view this as nothing but positive.

One of the reasons that we as bankruptcy attorneys here in St. Louis have been so busy over the past few years is that people have been living beyond their means without even thinking about it. Easy credit and a sense of procrastination had left many St. Louis citizens with the idea that they were making more money than they actually were. Why not go ahead and buy that enormous plasma screen TV? You can just pay for it later. Why not go on a shopping spree? You can just pay for it later. Why not take that vacation and put it all on the credit card? You can just pay for it later. And so on, and so on.

Now that credit is drying up, and the credit cards have finally raised their standards (for giving out cards at least; we sincerely doubt that they will raise the standards of their billing practices,) we believe that many Americans will drop back down to earth when it comes to how they decide to spend their money. People might place a higher premium on having savings in the bank as opposed to relying on that mythical “someday” where they might pay off their debts.

Unless you have the financial wherewithal to pay off your credit card bill in full every month, using a credit card is a foolish expenditure of cash. And if you have your eye on something that you want to buy, you will find that if you are diligent about your savings, you will have cash in hand to make the purchase sooner than you think.

In the meantime, if you are currently in a situation where your debts are higher than you could possibly handle, you have options here in St. Louis. At the Castle Law Office, we have helped hundreds of citizens in Missouri and Illinois successfully file for Chapter 7 and Chapter 13, and we can help you get a shot at a new life.

Contact the Castle Law Office for a free legal consultation today.

Got A Question?

News

FAQs

Videos