I’m a believer in individuals taking responsibility for their financial decisions. When you get a credit card offer in the mail, it’s up to you to read the fine print and assess your own financial situation before signing and sending in the application. It’s up to you to not dig yourself into a debt hole.
However, lenders make their offers very difficult to resist. You’ve heard of “predatory lenders” in the mortgage market, but they’re not the only ones trying to put you into debt. There are other marketers who spend every day trying to predict who will get sucked into their credit offers. They scan data on your credit, work history, bank accounts, and more (much of which you probably thought was private), then segment consumers into different buckets. Each bucket of people receives a marketing scheme directed specifically at them. The New York Times had a fascinating series on this practice this week.
No wonder some people fall into these “debt traps” — it’s like bringing a hungry person to a Las Vegas buffet and telling them they shouldn’t eat anything in front of them. So don’t dig yourself into a hole you can’t get out of — JUST SAY NO to credit offers that seem too good to be true!
Filed under: Uncategorized
