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米国流クレジッドカード乱用法
アメリカはクレジットカード社会。筆者も4枚のカードを持っています。しかし度を過ぎた買い物はカードの支払いを滞らせます。そんな場合、利率の低い新しいカードに加入し、それで借金を支払う方法がよく使われます。それでもだめなら事故破産という手段も…。
How Americans Get Caught in Credit Card Debt
By BOB YAMPOLSKY
Let us begin by looking at the three questions at the top of our sign for this month — which is, in its own way, quite a wonderful sign. Not only does it have a low-budget amateur design and neglect to tell us the name of the company being promoted, but there is an egregious grammatical error in the very first word.
"Creditor's calling?" it says. What it means to say is, "Creditors calling?" — that is, "Are creditors calling?" In other words, are your creditors — the people to whom you owe money — calling you and demanding that you pay debts that are long past due?
It continues: "Robbing Peter to pay Paul?" "To rob Peter to pay Paul" is a fairly common expression. It refers to the use of funds for a certain necessity — such as rent — to pay for another necessity — such as food.
And then we have, "Using one card to pay for another?" Card here is credit card - - in other words, do you use one credit card to pay off the debts on another? This is where we will focus our attention today.
About once a month I find in my mailbox an invitation to apply for a new credit card. If I had said yes to every offer that has come my way in the past couple of years, I would probably have over 20 credit cards and a combined credit line of about $200,000 (¥2.7 million). As it is, I have four with, a combined credit line of close to $40,000 (¥5.4 million).
When you make purchases with a credit card, you get a bill each month that itemizes your purchases and shows you your total balance, your remaining credit and your minimum payment. Let's say I used a Visa card to buy a nice computer for $2,500 (¥337,500). Assuming I made no other charges on the card that month, I would get a bill showing a balance of $2,500, $7,500 (¥1,012,500) in remaining credit (since my credit limit is $10,000) and a minimum payment of around $50 (¥6,750).
Credit cards can be a very nice thing — I get a $2,500 computer and I only have to pay $50 a month. The problem, though, is that the interest rates on credit cards are so high that even if I never make another purchase with the card, it will take me something like 30 years to pay for the computer.
Now $2,500 is a fairly manageable figure, which I could pay off in full at any time. But let's say I was "maxed out" on all my cards, carrying $40,000 in credit card debt. What would I do? Cut back my spending? Impose an austerity budget on my household? Get a second job? Nonsense! I would do what any good American consumer would do: simply wait until I got my next credit card offer in the mail and get another card.
The wonderful thing about these credit card offers is that they start with a low introductory rate, so that for the first six months, you may pay as low as 3.9 percent interest. If I'm paying 18.9 percent interest on $40,000 of debt, it makes sense for me to pay off this high-interest debt with this (temporarily) low-interest card. This is called transferring debt from one credit card to another, and it's a common practice today in America.
This, as you may well imagine, can lead to a cycle of ever-increasing debt. And it's when things reach an undeniably untenable state that you start taking note of ads like our sign for this month. Ads for these types of services are proliferating (in one TV ad, the narrator gushes, "Imagine! A zero balance on your next credit card bill!" — as if that were the very definition of happiness), for the simple reasons that each year over one billion credit card offers are mailed to Americans and that the current total consumer debt in the United States is over $1.2 trillion (¥158 trillion).
If you are too far in debt for these services, there is another option: bankruptcy. That may sound drastic, but from what I hear it is relatively painless, and you end up retaining most of your assets. Best of all, after you've been officially declared bankrupt, your credit rating actually improves, and it is quite easy to get credit cards again.
Let us begin by looking at the three questions at the top of our sign for this month — which is, in its own way, quite a wonderful sign. Not only does it have a low-budget amateur design and neglect to tell us the name of the company being promoted, but there is an egregious grammatical error in the very first word.
"Creditor's calling?" it says. What it means to say is, "Creditors calling?" — that is, "Are creditors calling?" In other words, are your creditors — the people to whom you owe money — calling you and demanding that you pay debts that are long past due?
It continues: "Robbing Peter to pay Paul?" "To rob Peter to pay Paul" is a fairly common expression. It refers to the use of funds for a certain necessity — such as rent — to pay for another necessity — such as food.
And then we have, "Using one card to pay for another?" Card here is credit card - - in other words, do you use one credit card to pay off the debts on another? This is where we will focus our attention today.
About once a month I find in my mailbox an invitation to apply for a new credit card. If I had said yes to every offer that has come my way in the past couple of years, I would probably have over 20 credit cards and a combined credit line of about $200,000 (¥2.7 million). As it is, I have four with, a combined credit line of close to $40,000 (¥5.4 million).
When you make purchases with a credit card, you get a bill each month that itemizes your purchases and shows you your total balance, your remaining credit and your minimum payment. Let's say I used a Visa card to buy a nice computer for $2,500 (¥337,500). Assuming I made no other charges on the card that month, I would get a bill showing a balance of $2,500, $7,500 (¥1,012,500) in remaining credit (since my credit limit is $10,000) and a minimum payment of around $50 (¥6,750).
Credit cards can be a very nice thing — I get a $2,500 computer and I only have to pay $50 a month. The problem, though, is that the interest rates on credit cards are so high that even if I never make another purchase with the card, it will take me something like 30 years to pay for the computer.
Now $2,500 is a fairly manageable figure, which I could pay off in full at any time. But let's say I was "maxed out" on all my cards, carrying $40,000 in credit card debt. What would I do? Cut back my spending? Impose an austerity budget on my household? Get a second job? Nonsense! I would do what any good American consumer would do: simply wait until I got my next credit card offer in the mail and get another card.
The wonderful thing about these credit card offers is that they start with a low introductory rate, so that for the first six months, you may pay as low as 3.9 percent interest. If I'm paying 18.9 percent interest on $40,000 of debt, it makes sense for me to pay off this high-interest debt with this (temporarily) low-interest card. This is called transferring debt from one credit card to another, and it's a common practice today in America.
This, as you may well imagine, can lead to a cycle of ever-increasing debt. And it's when things reach an undeniably untenable state that you start taking note of ads like our sign for this month. Ads for these types of services are proliferating (in one TV ad, the narrator gushes, "Imagine! A zero balance on your next credit card bill!" — as if that were the very definition of happiness), for the simple reasons that each year over one billion credit card offers are mailed to Americans and that the current total consumer debt in the United States is over $1.2 trillion (¥158 trillion).
If you are too far in debt for these services, there is another option: bankruptcy. That may sound drastic, but from what I hear it is relatively painless, and you end up retaining most of your assets. Best of all, after you've been officially declared bankrupt, your credit rating actually improves, and it is quite easy to get credit cards again.
Shukan ST: Sept. 25, 1998
(C) All rights reserved
- in its own way
- それなりに
- low-budget
- 安っぽい
- amateur
- 素人による
- neglect to 〜
- 〜 していない
- being promoted
- 宣伝されている
- egregious
- 実にひどい
- Creditor
- 債権者
- 〜 that are long past due
- 支払期限をとっくに過ぎた 〜
- Robbing Peter to pay Paul?
- 借金して借金を払っていますか?(甲から借りて乙に払う、という意味の熟語)
- fairly common expression
- わりと使われる表現
- refers to 〜
- 〜 のことを言う
- funds
- 金
- necessity
- 必要なもの
- apply for 〜
- 〜 を申し込む
- every offer that has come my way in the past couple of years
- 過去2 〜 3年間に私のところに舞い込んだ申し込み全部
- combined credit line
- カードの上限貸出額の合計
- As it is
- 実のところ
- make purchases
- 買い物をする
- itemizes 〜
- 〜 の明細を記す
- total balance
- 総合収支
- remaining credit
- クレジット残高
- minimum payment
- 月々の支払いの最低額
- Assuming 〜
- 〜 と仮定して
- interest rates
- 利率
- manageable figure
- 手に負える額
- could pay off in full
- 一括払いにすることができる
- was "maxed out"
- カードの上限額に達してしまう
- Cut back
- 切りつめる
- spending
- 支出
- Impose
- 課す
- austerity
- 厳しい
- Nonsense!
- そんな馬鹿なことはしない
- consumer
- 消費者
- introductory rate
- 最初の利率
- makes sense
- 納得がいく
- temporarily
- 一時的に
- transferring
- 振り替える
- common practice
- 日常茶飯事
- ever-increasing
- 増え続ける
- undeniably
- 明白に
- untenable state
- どうしようもない状態
- start taking note of ads
- 広告をメモし始める
- are proliferating
- 増殖している
- gushes
- しゃべりたてる
- zero balance
- (借金のない)ゼロ収支
- current
- 現状の
- are too far in debt for these services
- そういうサービスを利用しても対処しきれないほど借金があるなら
- bankruptcy
- 破産
- drastic
- 思い切った
- relatively
- 比較的
- painless
- 痛みの少ない
- retaining
- 維持する
- assets
- 資産
- credit rating
- 信用格付け
- improves
- 良くなる