60% use credit cards to pay for Christmas gifts
A survey in Israel of 500 consumers found 60% intend to pay for Christmas gifts using their credit cards, 22% will pay with cash (clever clogs!), 7% will use gift certificates, 3% cheques and the remaining 11% will use a combination of these.
Of the 60% who’ll use credit cards, a survey in Australia found that only 50.5% will pay off their credit card debt in full with just over 10% unable to pay more than the minimum repayments.
At the 2001 Census, there were 7.4 million households in Australia. Let’s round it up to 7.5 million (I’m sure there’s more). If we base Christmas spending intentions on the Israeli study, 60% will be buying Christmas gifts on their credit cards, which is 4.5 million households. Of these, 10% won’t be able to pay more than the minimum repayments per month.
Eeeeek! That’s 450,000 households giving Christmas gifts they honestly cannot afford. The average credit card balance in July 2009 was $3,100. Doesn’t sound much, does it?
Many might pay some of that balance off just so they can have some room to spend it back up again on gifts.
This simple credit card calculator (ignore the pounds and pretend it’s dollars if you’re not in the UK) works out horribly quickly how much time it would take to pay it off. Enter your APR (annual percentage rate – mine is 17.49% which shows I have to hunt around for a better credit card), the minimum monthly payment as a percentage of the balance (mine is 1.5%), ignore the “Payment protection rate” field and hit calculate.
Try it – you will be honestly shellshocked how much extra you’re paying when you use credit and don’t pay it off in full.
Tags: bargain-hunting, Christmas gifts, gift cards, gift certificates, gift shopping
Not too many can pay in full because of debt. Debit is also accumulated because people don’t have health insurance no more. If you stuck with outrageous medical fees there is nothing more you can do. If you can you should put money on your cards first.
If you want to buy an amazing and unexpected Christmas gift for your loved one,I’d like to suggest giving http://www.photo2statue.com a check.
Photo2Statue.com makes personalized statues from photos resembling people on the photos, each statue is handcrafted and one-of-a-kind,your loved one can display it at home or in office as decoration and whenever he/she sees the statue, he/she will remember your love.
I agree with the above. MOst people do put xmas on credit. We all spend too much on xmas. Which is why people should take a look over http://www.TheRandomShop.co.uk as they have a large range of great cheap christmas gift ideas for this year.
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