Your creditor knows you have a lot of financial obligations, so it gives you the luxury of making minimum payments, an amount that's only between 1-3% of your balance and is sometimes less than your finance charge. Isn't it nice of them to give you that courtesy?
Have you ever heard of a creditor doing something nice for its customers? Of course not! The courtesy you think is allowing you to have more room in your budget is actually costing you. Minimum payments take a little money over a long period of time so you may never realize just how much money you're unnecessarily spending unless you look at the big picture.
Are you brave enough to see how much your minimum payments are costing you?
I like the self-scans grocery stores are using. It's often easier and faster to scan my own items than to get in a clerk-scanned lane. The bad thing is, self-scans also make it easier for credit thieves to rack up charges and get away with it. Since there's no clerk checking IDs on credit card transactions, a thief can easily use your credit card to buy groceries or other merchandise (including gift cards for restaurants and other stores).
It's not just self-scans, but any store that gives shoppers the convenience of swiping their own cards. Convenience usually comes at a price, but identity theft isn't a fair trade off.
What, if anything, do you think stores can do to keep the convenience of self-scanning and self-swiping but keep credit card thieves from succeeding?
Protecting Your Identity
