• Home
• Debt Consolidation Glossary

What Happened To Credit Card Offers?

Have you noticed that you’re not getting as many credit card offers as you used to get before the economy officially tanked? How are you feeling now that your mailbox is clutter free of all those opportunities that you were just throwing in the trash?

Well, there’s an upside and a downside to all of this. Let’s look at the upside of it first.

First, you’re not getting bothered by all those requests for your participation. Truth be told, if you had taken the time to fill out all of those applications, you’d have been doing yourself more harm than good. Two things happen, neither one of them good, when you continually fill those forms out. One, your credit statement shows every time you apply for credit, whether you get it or not. Having too much credit is almost the same as not having enough; other creditors get scared and wonder what’s going on. Two, if you get turned down, that shows up also, and it also affects your credit score and rating.

Second, strangely enough, the pressure is off. When all those mailings kept coming, you felt like one day you just had to fill some of them out. I almost hate to admit this, but what I used to do was open them up, darken my name and address, put it into the envelope they sent and put it back in the mail. Of course I only did that if they’d already paid for postage. My theory was to waste their time as much as they wasted mine; petty I know, but I felt better.

Now, let’s look at the downside. The first is that it indicates just how bad the banking problem is. We always say credit card companies, but the truth is that almost every credit card offer we get comes from a bank of some sort. Banks hurt, they stop giving out credit.

Second, we need that credit, or at least some of it. As banks start tightening up the rules for who gets what, suddenly even good credit scores aren’t working for us. There have been more people with good credit being turned down because it’s not good enough, or any other stupid reason banks want to give. It doesn’t even give you an advantage to apply from your own bank anymore.

Three, why might we need that credit? Right now there are a lot of people in some tough financial straits. It wouldn’t hurt to have the opportunity to apply for one of those no-interest credit cards for at least a year right now, at a high enough interest rate to consolidate some of the outstanding debt and be able to make smaller payments for awhile to ride out the bad financial storm. It’s much easier to apply for another credit card than it is to apply for a consolidation loan, and you learn the results much quicker also.

Am I nostalgic for credit card offers? No, but it does seem a bit off without them.

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.

Debt consolidation is the process of minimizing your creditors and consolidating your debt. After consolidation, you will have less creditors (ideally one) and you should be paying less in interest each month. Your debt will likely become more manageable and easier to payoff, but it's important to remember that every successful consolidation process depends on your ability to live within your means. Thanks for stopping by to learn about consolidation and the different consolidation loans and processes that are available.