In my book, "The Financial Physician: How To Cure Your Money Problems and Boost Your Financial Health" (November 2009), I state that credit card debt is a cancer to the financial body. Americans have lived beyond their means for at least the last decade. Credit cards are the main reason families get behind the financial eight ball. Banks are now preying on already weakened card holders by arbitrarily raising interest rates and fees. Keep those cards in your wallet and pay down balances as best you can.-LouBanks Brace for Credit Card Write-Offs
It used to be easy to guess how many Americans would have problems paying their credit card bills. Banks just looked at unemployment: Fewer jobs meant more trouble ahead.
The unemployment rate has long mirrored banks’ loss rates on card balances. But Eddie Ward, 32 and jobless, may be one reason that rule of thumb no longer holds. For many lenders, losses are now starting to outpace layoffs.
Mr. Ward, of Arkansas, lost his job at a retail warehouse in April and so far has managed to make minimum payments on his credit card debt, which he estimates at $15,000 to $20,000. Asked whether he thinks he will be able to pay off his balance, he said, “Not unless I win the lottery.”
In the meantime, he said, “I’m just doing what I can.”
Experts predict that millions of Americans will not be able to pay off their debts, leaving a gaping hole at ailing banks still trying to recover from the housing bust.
The bank stress test results, released Thursday, suggested that the nation’s 19 biggest banks could expect nearly $82.4 billion in credit card losses by the end of 2010 under what federal regulators called an adverse economic situation.
But if unemployment breaches 10 percent, as many economists predict, the rate of uncollectible balances at some banks could far exceed that level. At
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