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Credit Cards & Loans

Don’t put it all on the plastic this Christmas, warns debt charity

Tahmina Mannan
Written By:
Tahmina Mannan
Posted:
Updated:
06/12/2012

Credit card users are being warned against over-spending heavily on the plastic to fund this year’s festive season from a leading debt charity.

Credit Action revealed that 27.7m plastic card transactions are made every day in the UK, all adding up to a whopping £1.362m.

Plastic cards constitute both credit and debit purchases, with £943m spent on debit cards over 21.3m transactions daily and £419m spent on credit cards over 6.4m transactions daily.

The charitry says that this will increase as pressure to spend builds during the Christmas season.

Michelle Highman, CEO of Credit Action said: “It’s a lot easier to lose track of spending when it’s done on any sort of card. But credit cards in particular can encourage us to think that we’re not spending real money.

“Even the most money conscious of us splash out during the Christmas season and it’s easy to say ‘I’ll worry about it later’, but this approach has consequences, especially when using credit to finance Christmas.

“Credit isn’t free money and you will need to pay it back later. Worse still, if it isn’t possible to pay off your credit card when you get the bill, the true cost of Christmas will continue to go up and up each month that you’re paying it down.”

Credit Action advises consumers to track how much they are spending in order to not lose sight of how much is being spent.


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