Card Purchases that Push Spending Over the Edge
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008You can use your credit card to purchase almost anything. However, there are some purchases that are more common than others. It is often these purchases that we dont realize are adding up to a whole lot of debt. By controlling your credit card spending when it comes to these particular areas of buying, you can reduce the problems that you have with your cards. This results in better spending habits which make your credit cards work for you instead of the other way around.
The most common of these purchases is dining out. Most of us don’t like to cook at home and so we eat at restaurants and fast food places on a semi-regular basis. More often that not, we do this with friends or family. At the end of a meal, we often find that no one has cash so someone has to put the bill on a credit card. When we pick up the tab for a whole group, the amount of debt that we owe on our cards can go up quickly. Get in the habit of always taking cash when you go out to eat. That way, if your group has to pay on credit, you can let someone else get the bill and you can give your share in cash instead. If you do end up with the whole tab, at least put the total on a rewards or miles card so you can get something back for it.
Another common buying area that gets us into spending trouble is entertainment. Its always been a problem that we want to spend too much to be entertained, but its particularly a problem now when its so easy to access entertainment at home using a credit card. Your favorite musician just released an album so you go online and use your credit card to download the tracks. You dont want to watch anything thats on television so you head to the internet and get a movie rental instead. Even when its not about instant gratification, its easy to overspend when buying CDs, DVDs, books and other entertainment sources through the Internet. Get in the habit of capping the amount of entertainment you purchase on credit to reduce the risk of getting in over your head.
Its not just entertainment at home that gets us in trouble either but also entertainment out on the road. In fact, travel itself is an area where most people use credit cards and get into debt as a result. When we travel, we usually plan on using credit and paying it off later. Because of this, we dont really set the kind of spending limits that we should. We just go all out, eating at nice restaurants and staying in a good hotel and checking out all of the attractions in any given area. The best thing to do here is to use a card with a low credit limit for any travel. This sets an automatic cap on what you can spend so that you don’t go crazy just because you got to go out of town.
