[jumpy]

ha, credit cards... I have one with a modest amount outstanding.
Thing is, I never used it for anything I couldn't already afford (like others in this thread), until the recession bit my work and home life and then I had no choice if I wanted to keep a roof over my head. It's ironic that I never needed the use of a credit card until everything went tits up with the economy, then I had no choice.

This morning the bank sent me a letter reducing the amount of credit I can use, why this should be I don't know, since the amount outstanding on the card is greatly less than a quarter of my previous 'credit limit'. So, as there's a lack of jobs and income and ever increasing utility costs my margin for error or emergency to tide me over is gone now.

Banks; they'll give you an umbrella when it's sunny, then ask for it back when it starts to rain.

Fact is, if banks were not so damn greedy in the first place in lending to people who couldn't afford it, people who live in a consumer driven world where every measure of success is material in origin, then the banks wouldn't have fallen on their faces when their creditors decided they wanted to be paid up... to value a business or industry based on the potential value of all the cash it is owed is not the same as its true value in assets. Which fool thought that was a good idea needs shooting. But it's an idea that is so pervasive that even if you had no credit debt as an individual before the recession, chances are you probably do now because it was either that or have no gas or electricity supply (that's what my credit card was used for recently).

I lost my job and a respectable income because of something that was caused by other people; part of my home life was turned upside down due to this extra pressure. The jobs that are available round here as what I call 'non-jobs' of too few hours and negligible pay when stacked against the most basic necessities of providing food shelter and warmth... hehe, even if I sold everything I own and reduced my life to its barest minimum, it would only stave off the wolves from my door for perhaps another month.

For me the trap of credit use is that I only used it because I had no other choice and no sensible recourse to debt that was calling at my door no matter what I did. I don't like it... in fact I hate it.
I'd still be at my old job if it were not for the recession and this obsession with exponential profit/growth that banks, governments and company bosses seem to think is good. I'd still be there earning and paying tax and spending and saving - all my savings are gone, lost to the recession and my options are reduced so much I can scarcely believe it myself. It can only be a damn economist who thinks perpetual growth is a sensible goal.... whatever happened to the idea of sustainability in business and banking? Has the world gone totally mad with greed?