In good news, the restrictions on the types of (abusive) fees that credit card companies can charge clients are now in full effect. You can’t have a late payment fee of more than $25, and the late payment fee can’t exceed what your monthly payment would have been. That’s good news, since outrageous late fees were one way that credit card companies used to ensure that people stayed in debt if they got behind on their payments.
You also can’t be charged a fee for not using your credit card, which while it seems like a crazy fee to be charged, was frequently done. This meant that people were encouraged to use their cards at least once a month to avoid the fee, thus ensuring they’d be charged interest. It also made having a credit card as a back up, or only to use for certain large purchases, unreasonable.
So those are the positive news points. Any time something is done to make sure that large banks and credit card companies can’t take advantage of their customers, which many of these fees frankly did, that’s a good thing.
However, we all need to proceed with caution! The temptation is certainly there now to not only get more comfortable with using credit cards, but to be more lax about paying attention to bills and usage since we know we won’t be penalized as harshly in many circumstances. If you’re reading this blog post, that probably means that you’ve been working hard to distance yourself from consumer culture at least a little bit, and chances are high that a big part of that included reducing your use of credit cards. It’s incredibly important that you continue that path! If you’ve weaned yourself off of frequent credit card use, don’t let the fact that the laws now make using them safer for you be a reason that you slide back off the wagon!
We don’t think that you have to cut up all of your credit cards in order to be a successful postconsumer. In fact, it’s pretty difficult to live without at least one credit card unless you’re really living in the middle of nowhere and completely living off your own resources! However, with the new credit card laws in effect, we need to be extra careful not to give ourselves reasons to slide back into bad credit habits.
