The fact that the banks are not reducing credit card interest continues to get play in the media, often portrayed as a lack of 'relief' to those suffering under CC debt.

Almost every Australian adult has at least one credit card and the nation's collective card debt, attracting interest, has blown out to $32.4 billion.

News.com.au unfortunately

Every time I see these figures I wondered how much was attracting interest - I'm really surprised its that high! That's like 2k per person if you excludeabout 5 million younguns who can't get credit.

What the f***? I've been in situations where I have paid CC interest in the past but its always been temporary and I worked my arse off to clear it ASAP. Are there really that many people who leave interest-attracting CC debt as a matter of course?

I expected the see in the Daily Show skit a subset of stupid people called "people with outstanding credit card balances".

haha at suckers with CC's.

l2save.

Cool thing here with Dutch banks as experienced by one of my mates. When you open a dutch credit card at the end of the month they take out all the money owing from your savings account unless you specifically tell them not to do this. I like this system :)

i bet this included people who put heaps of cc stuff for their business on personal credit cards for like $100k?

no, personal cc obviously, was funny watching it happen though

when i was younger and wasnt ballin like i am now, i used to live with my cc pretty much maxed out all the time

only ever paid if off when i got a loan to consolidate all my debts

its why i dont roll with a credit card now, debit only

f*** CC's though one would be handy for buying s*** on the internets, though most of that can be done with bpay or netbank transfer these days anyway

if only commbank would get off their ass and get a visa debit

the cc itself is not the problem

don't people realise they have to pay off their credit cards?? $32.4 Billion? this is almost a f***ign epidemic.

I have 1 CC for online purchases.

I buy the s*** and pay it off within a few days.

debit card is where its at. you should get one instead of a credit card rubba-chikin.

I still have ~3k oweing on my CC. Was a f***ing awesome Europe trip though.
I am paying it off rather quickly though.

I have zero debt on CC's.

2 Aus cards (total of 30K limit I think)

1 Irish 10K Euro's

it's crazy the amount of credit these companies give out.

Well someone else is picking up our 10k debt. Suckers

I was thinking about this, and wondering how it could be that everyone had 2k CC debt on average, but then realised that I stick all my day-to-day expenses on my CC and then pay it off at the end of the month.

But then something else occurred to me - sure I might have $900 on my CC right at this moment, but I also have $xx,000 in my other accounts. It's a tad misleading to say I'm in debt as a result of that.

what rubba said and what raven said.

See that's the problem - I also have a couple of CCs and sometimes they have money owing on them, and I clear them out monthly.

But according to the article, the 32 brazillion is interest attracting - that means its unpaid balances, not 'normal' use where you pay it off every month.

I read in the paper the other day about a chick who had racked up $60 grand in CC debt in 3 months. When she maxed out one card she would get another and even used other cards to pay off the debt from cards she had maxed out.

It sounds really dumb but some people just don't learn about proper finance management. Especially when they are young and just left the nest, CC's can seem like free money.

Another vote for Visa debit.

people are stupid, there's no other explanation.

hear hear

Visa Debit ftw.

CC's ftl.

why use your own money when you can use other people's?
debit card ftl
credit card ftw

I wanted to get a Visa debit so I could buy stuff online, but Commonwealth didn't (still don't?) offer them, so I reluctantly ended up getting a credit card.

I've since learned that anyone who uses their credit card frequently has no f***ing self control. At the moment, my credit card debit is $0. I more often than not forget that I've even got a credit card.

There's nothing wrong with credit cards. There's a lot wrong with people.

Banks encourage it ... CCs are good profit makers

But they are bad debt for banks because they are wildly uncontrolled.
1. unsolicited CC offers should be illegal. My banks regularly offers me 20grand CCs, if I wanted to borrow 20grand as a personal loan I'd have to fill out forms etc etc etc
2. a central CC authority needs to exist that tracks people total possible debt so people can't get 10 cards of 10grand each.


And if banks can't learn to control themselves, maybe cap the interest rate a certain level above the RBA rate (watch the banks stop pushing them out then).

CCs and unsolicited CC offers play into some people minds ... I don't doubt dfor a second that the banks haven't got advise from marketers about how to increase peoples personal debt.

I don't see the big deal with credit cards, it's the people that use them. I mean, do you really not understand it's borrowed money?

We have one mainly to pay for large irregular bills. So every month additional cash goes into the homeloan to cover expected bills (such as car rego/insurance, house insurance, rates etc). Then pay the bill on CC so the loot sits in the homeloan that little bit longer (reducing interest paid on loan)and then pay off CC from home loan cashback the next month.

So over the course of the year there is a few extra thousand in the homeloan at any one time reducing the interest and money is set aside for those nasty bills.

Everybody kicks a goal.

people are stupid, there's no other explanation.

all people or just other people? :P i have a cc n it's pretty easy to use it without incurring much, if any, interest as other people in this thread have said. i only have a $1k cc though coz i rekn the security is s***house.

I was thinking about this, and wondering how it could be that everyone had 2k CC debt on average, but then realised that I stick all my day-to-day expenses on my CC and then pay it off at the end of the month.

This is what I do, been a few times where I have to front up for like 500-2k for learning expenses or whatever and it hurts for that fortnights pay. So got a credit card with a 44day interest free period (3 fortnights) allowing me to pay it off in smaller payments, and all for like 30 bucks a month! And not having to transfer money from my savings account!
Win win for me!

I only use my CC for my WoW subscription or if I wanna buy something online which is hardly ever so my card always has the full balance. If I can't buy something outright with cash then I just go without it.

you dont need to buy things, you live in your bedroom these days

you dont need to buy things, you live in your bedroom these days

Lounge room actually, he has a freaking projector screen and everything! I would too!

why use your own money when you can use other people's?
debit card ftl
credit card ftw

Exactly.

I'm closing my Visa Debit account and switching over to my new CC because if something goes wrong with a transaction, I'd rather it be someone else's money that is frozen while the issue is being sorted out, rather than my own. And also not having to make a payment on the CC till the end of the month means my money is collecting more interest in the savings account in the meanwhile.

this thread reminded me to pay off my CC


edit; now its $32.4 billion - $129.76

last edited by maxe at 10:58:35 10/Oct/08

Gee, you got that Male hooker cheap.


(So Chub tells me)

I don't have a credit card and I never will. Quite frankly people who run up credit card debt are just f***ing morons like that idiot chick on 60 minutes the other night.

well you don't have to run up debt just because you have a card - that's entirely up to you. if you pick a bank that has charges that suit your use, they're a completely useful tool and serve to help you make better use of your funds.


if you know you suck at resisting temptation then you're probably smart not to get one though.

i suck at resisting jims tool

it's the mango flavour

cc's are rad unless you racka disciprine

When she maxed out one card she would get another and even used other cards to pay off the debt from cards she had maxed out.

sounds like a Ponzi game

I've never had a credit card and don't really want one. I have a visa debit and that's fine for buying stuff online. If I'm broke it is society's fault that I need to pay for stuff to live, so I will make society pay.

I don't mind a credit card. I tend to only use it for items that really don't belong in the regular living expenses budget for the week. Also for high price items if I ever feel like spoiling myself. My normal bank account usually has less than 1k and everything else is in a higher interest rate savings account. At the end of every month I just pay the bill off before the interest is applied on the CC.

i clicked tagg's link expecting a game to play :\

Nothing wrong with CC if you know how to control yourself. Of course a lot of people don't so the massive f***ing amount owing.

when i was a 20 year old student applying for my first credit card (earning not very much a year, maybe like 15k?) they gave me a 7500$ limit

gg?

they're useful for when you go to park at those carparks in europe that have credit card only entry with that chip in them to read.

also buying stuff online and everyday stuff to rack up points and get free swag

Visa Debit FTW

when i was a 20 year old student applying for my first credit card (earning not very much a year, maybe like 15k?) they gave me a 7500$ limit

Strange, I got my first CC last year as a full-time worker, and mine only has a $3700 limit. That's more than enough for me though, it rarely has more than $100 on it.

Thanks for making me feel old, my first CC had a $500 dollar limit. Can you even get them now?

sounds like a Ponzi game

no, not really.

I have heaps of debt, but i don't care.. because i am impatient and want stuff now!
IMO, if you are not in debt above your annual income, there is nothing wrong with it.

I dont own a house, i just buy toys.

At the time of typing this i am 35k in debt. But 8k of that will be wiped when i sell one of my bikes, as i just bought another :-)

Sounds like you plan on not getting ahead any time soon.

credit card is awesome. e.g. internet transactions it is so convenient. plus you get a itemised bill at the end of every month. plus you get the loyalty points that have bought me heaps of free s*** this year.

the key is to repay ON TIME.

i see why you own bikes vash, because all your debt will be gone when you kill yourself

income able to cover it = c/card is good

as i mentioned in another thread we use cc for everything and deposit all cash in home loan and pay off total cc debt every month. i even buy stuff for my mum and dad with this.
bonus for us is that we get Velocity points and fly interstate and hire cars when we feel like a trip away.

there's really no one size fits all of this sort of thing. it's horses for courses and depends a lot on your personal circumstances and self control.

i see why you own bikes vash, because all your debt will be gone when you kill yourself

ding ding...
OK i dont plan on dying, but i do plan on having fun before its too late.
EG, russia & china nuking our butts

f*** 35K in debt. I have $18K left on my uni loan and even that sucks. But to be 35K in credit card debt is stupid.

How much do you make a year?

Uni debt, pfft that is hardly a debt. :P

35K in credit card debt, that hurts, a lot.

SO much money wasted in paying off interest. You say you spend you money on fun things because you want to have fun and whatnot, that is fair. Except that the money you waste on interest could buy more fun things, so that over 5 years you would have actually been able to do more fun things then what you will with a cc debt.

well its not all credit card, but most of it is personal loan.
I'm going to move to Citibank to consolidate my loans, they have an awesome offer of debt consolidation at the moment, even personal loans, up to $25,000 at a rate of 6.9% PA

Credit cards are great ... only if you pay them on time. If you don't then you are a fewl. Like the old saying goes "A fewl and his money are soon parted".

the cc itself is not the problem

bingo

I've never, ever paid a cent in interest. I buy almost everything on my credit card because I get Qantas flier miles.

I've probably had my credit card almost 10 years, and maybe 2 times in that 10 years I've had interest on my statements. I checked into it and both times it was MY f***up not paying off my cards in time. I called ANZ and explained the situation just to confirm I'd fixed it and it wouldn't happen again and BOTH times they refunded me the interest. ANZ are f***ing awesome.

If you don't have self control though it's probably better to avoid the risk and just not get one :)

well its not all credit card, but most of it is personal loan.
I'm going to move to Citibank to consolidate my loans, they have an awesome offer of debt consolidation at the moment, even personal loans, up to $25,000 at a rate of 6.9% PA

I'd be reading those terms and conditions carefully. Theres no such thing as free money and citibank will have an angle.

Same as those balance transfers. I've racked up a bit of cc debt back in my younger years and am looking at sorting it now. Of all the ones i looked at citibank were the wosrt for 0% for 6months then they push it up to the 20odd % cash rate! I can really see a lot of idiots falling for that one then jumping on today tonight to winge about the injustice of it all!

Seconding anz being awesome - ended up going with them for a 2.9% for 12 months and then it reverts to their purchase rate @ 12.99%.

I don't understand.

Why not get a loan with the above account at 2.9% for 12 months, shove all that money into a high interest savings account, say 7.25%. Leave it for 12 months then pay back the original loan and keep the difference?

There must be some sort of catch, is there a set-up fee, an early pay-off fee?

I just left the country, easier.

Why not get a loan with the above account at 2.9% for 12 months, shove all that money into a high interest savings account, say 7.25%. Leave it for 12 months then pay back the original loan and keep the difference?

Get 2 credit cards. Take cash advance on first. Put money in high intrest account. Get 2nd and do a balance transfer with 12months 0% rate (+3% transfer fee)

cash @ 2.9%?

There must be some sort of catch

after you pay tax on that 7.25% interest account its going to look about 4.35%, then with the 2.9% you pay, it is going to be looking around 1.45%. Then add in account keeping fees. Starts to become not worth it.

Where does when get a loan thats 2.9% pa? And cash advance is not at 2.9% its at the 18% or whatever ridiculous amount cc cards charge idiots for withdrawing cash from their cc.

The 2.9% is purely when transferring from another credit card. You have to ring them up and give them the details of your other cc and they pay it out.

The catch? It's all a marketing ploy designed by the banks to get you over to their credit card.

I'd be reading those terms and conditions carefully. Theres no such thing as free money and citibank will have an angle.

No catch.
its a 6.9% PA balance transfer for the life of the loan. If you spend any more money, then it ups to about 14% or so.
Discipline yourself and you got a winner of a deal

I called ANZ and explained the situation just to confirm I'd fixed it and it wouldn't happen again and BOTH times they refunded me the interest. ANZ are f***ing awesome.

I can't believe they did this... you must deposit the qgl phat loot with anz because I can't see any reason why they would (or should) refund you the interest just because you forgot.... it's like you're at school and ur printer broke so you couldn't hand in your assignment or something...

^LOL he probably threatened to withdraw all the QGL non-profit organization profit.

Vash, if you are still using a CC and spending money on toys, you obviously don't have any discipline, and you'll likely be in debt for many decades to come.

Cut your cards, stop constantly buying s*** that you don't need.

Billy speaks the truth - he goes without buying t-shirts!

Shirts are a non-essential item!

I can't believe they did this... you must deposit the qgl phat loot with anz because I can't see any reason why they would (or should) refund you the interest just because you forgot.... it's like you're at school and ur printer broke so you couldn't hand in your assignment or something...

I called up and complained about interest on my card, because I paid my bill on time, but it was some weird thing, and they were like "well ill take the interest off the account, but this is why you were charged bla bla bla" It was only like $4 anyway.

i think the key to credit cards is only have 1, having a limit that you can always pay off within a month and always paying it off fully after the interest free period is over.

and always tear up the limit increase letters, they are just trolling you.

if you can do this then they are awesome, if you can't manage this then you should keep well clear of them.

In regards to the credit card balance transfers - its also handy to know that if you use the credit card whilst you've got a balance transfer any payments you make go off the balance transfer rather than newer purchases. So for people that balance transfer and continue to use the card end up paying the 12.99% for the year whilst they are paying off the balance transferred.

i was under the impression that most (all?) credit cards calculated the interest daily but only charged it monthly.

so each day they get annual interest rate/365*balance (balance outside of interest free days that is) and add that up over each day of the month, then whacked it all on once per month?

I've got a National CC. Haven't paid any interest on it at all. The interest is calculated at the end of the month with whatever is on the card. So make sure nothing is on the card at the end of the month for Epic Win.

Taggs is right, it is calculated dail and charged monthly.

Toll, yours must have an interest free period.

They don't just take a 'snapshot' of the account balance on a given day and base their interest charge on that.

The St George Vertigo card only calculates your interest once every 55 days. If there's nothing on the card at that time, you don't get charged.

So that makes it an interest free period card right? Once the 55 days expires it will calculate interest on a daily basis on the outstanding balance.

Obes, all banks run credit checks on people signing up for cards. Any attempt you make to get credit successful or otherwise is stored in your credit history for 5 years. If you run around signing up to hundreds of cards eventually they will decline you when they think its outside your means.

If you want to try and pull an interest scam on a 1st year low rate etc.. from another credit card there is plenty of sites around that will charge you as a purchase and send you cash via other means. Usually the fee's on these dodgy ass services are going to be a lot more than the difference in any cash rates. The best way to do it would be to sign up at an online casino and convince them to give you a refund (software doesnt' work). They will not reverse the charge on your card because card associations look at a high refund % as fraud so they will want to settle it some other way TT, Bank Transfer, Neteller or Cheque. All these methods have flat fee's not based of a % so if the amount is large enough you could get away with it. The problem is that most of the first year joining fee's are limited to 5k (everything over is a normal rate) making it a completely worthless exercise.

I can't believe they did this... you must deposit the qgl phat loot with anz because I can't see any reason why they would (or should) refund you the interest just because you forgot.... it's like you're at school and ur printer broke so you couldn't hand in your assignment or something...

I couldn't believe it either, but I assure you its true. I was f***ing blown away the first time, so you can imagine how much I <3 them after the second time. I take every opportunity to pimp ANZ because they're one big company that actually acts like they give a s*** about you. Obviously YMMV but I have nothing but good experiences with them.

They get enough kickbacks of from the merchants you purchase from, interest is the icing

I just called ANZ to cancel my cc, they refunded 3 months interest charges if I kept the cc open, so I lowered the limit to the minimum and set multiple reminders on my phone to ensure I close it before the next annual fee.

Looks like my poker account's about to get a top up

I had my credit card for 5years now and have never had to pay anything extra... i have it on automatically debit to my bank account so it gets paid off every month...

I mainly use it because with the commonwealth bank you get charge if you do more then 15 transactions on your normal account... and you also have $800 a day limit on your eftpos....

one of our RMA guys (the guy at a computer shop who you ring and tells you your $1000 gaming videocard isn't back from Taiwan yet) had his entire life savings/investments stripped from him and sent to a random account overseas last year.


the local state cops can't do anything. the feds can't do anything. his bank showed only a minimal amount of interest until they found out what he did for a living and no doubt - the potential that he had to effect their biz for the better or worse given that he had a brain and the ability to use the internet.


he had to jump thru a million hoops with ANZ just to get his money back.


personally, I enjoy telling customers and people on public forums what I really think.


I closed my CC account..


people really have no idea how open they are using the s***. they bring it upon themselves. gawd... when I stop to think of the sheer number of times high school kids working @ pizza hut could have grabbed my Typo's details and bought a years wages full of s*** and easily blamed it on the retard on staff...


I hate using the 'hole in the wall'.. but it's there for a reason eh

and that reason is so that grapes don't overshadow tractors in candystores

he had to jump thru a million hoops with ANZ just to get his money back.

I remember reading something a while back saying that Australian banks are actually under no obligation to give you ANY money back if you are ripped off Internet-stylez. ANZ actually fully guarantee that they'll credit you for unauthorised transactions (providing you comply with their terms of service, etc). This is made clear in big bold letters on their Internet banking features page, something that other banks don't seem to do. NABs PDS seems to imply that you're completely liable, but I suspect if it came to it they'd probably cover you anyway because the bad press would kill them.

So yeh another big plus for ANZ

its a wonder vash can afford anything, never seen anyone go though so many LC8's, hows the 9fiddy SE going Vash?

Looks like my poker account's about to get a top up

It needs a Top up? Surly you win all the time! ;)

Also, With my NAB account I need to authorize any transactions through the use of my mobile phone and SMS's. Basically I set up a cash transfer and it asks for an auth code, that code is sent to my mobile within seconds. It works well I think.


If you have a Credit Card and you apply for finance for anything is the full $ limit of the CC counted as debt regardless of how much is actually on it?

last edited by Tollaz0r! at 06:04:31 16/Oct/08

the available limit is considered full debt when your risk is accessed for other finance

I play poker online for fun, I have a well paying job I'm not going to grind away for not much more than minimum wage (but with far more risk) like some wowaddict.

I throw my money away on turbo SNGs