| Prepaid Credit Cards: A Great Payment Option for Both Mature ...
According to a recent Experian-Gallop poll, 31 percent of Americans are having trouble making ends meet, and 49 percent of American consumers dont pay their credit card balance in full at the end of the month. Many hard-working, middle-class Americans are struggling with their finances, and credit card debt is playing no small part in the decline of the American standard of living. One smart way to avoid credit card debt and credit card interest charges: use prepaid credit cards, also known as prepaid debit cards or stored value cards. Prepaid credit cards work the same way traditional credit cards do and can be used to pay for all manner of goods and services at virtually any place that accepts regular credit cards. The main difference between a prepaid card and a regular credit card is that with a prepaid card you need to fund the account before making purchases.
Cash becoming a thing of the past
BLOOMINGTON — Mina Aitelhadj had about $8 and some change — less than the $10 she needed to renew her driver's license — when she went to the Secretary of State's office in Bloomington recently.The Normal resident wasn't caught off guard by an unexpected fee; she expected to pay with her credit card. But after waiting in line and handing it over, she found out the agency only accepts Discover, cash and check.“That was a bit of a problem," Aitelhadj said. “I had to run and get some cash at the ATM."Aitelhadj doesn't carry more than $20 in her wallet and rarely spends cash, just for the emergency cup of coffee or gasoline. She prefers to use her debit card for most purchases.The 26-year-old graduate student at Illinois State University is like a growing number of Americans.Nationwide, 45 percent of consumers use cash less often than they did two years ago, according to the American Bankers Association's 2005-2006 Study of Consumer Payment Preferences.
Trapped in a Government Spending Spree
My excuse is that I was driven insane by the incessant noise from the sensitive Mogambo Economic Seismograph System (MESS), the recording pens noisily clicking and clacking, all the time clicking and clacking, clicking and clacking as they bang back and forth, erratically scrawling and scratching a frantic graph of financial desperation and doom across that rolling strip of graph paper. That said, I admit that cleaning a bunch of loaded and cocked weapons is not the smartest thing I've ever done, but (in my own defense) probably the most optimal in terms of preparedness, which is so important that the pithy phrase "Be prepared" is the motto of the Boy Scouts. But these are desperate times, prepared or not. For example, right before an accidental burst of bullets exploded the Total Fed Credit Seismograph into a spray of tiny plastic shards and miscellaneous bits of wire, I was suddenly alarmed that TFC had slumped by a surprising $13.4 billion last week, which is a big, BIG drop, which startled me and resulted in the, you know, unexpected ear-splitting gunfire.
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