This story in Crain’s Cleveland Business about Medical Mutual of Ohio offering a medical credit card to assist its insured in paying their out of pocket medical expenses is part of a larger trend of the medical industry assisting consumers in paying for increasingly expensive treatments by offering payment assistance through credit cards.
But when a [...]

The United States isn’t the only country where consumers are having difficulty with credit card debt and rising expenses.  I previously wrote about the problems with credit card debt in Great Britain.  And several new news articles have focused on the spreading consumer debt crisis around the world:
Australians owe a national record $44.2 billion in [...]

Pretty much every newspaper article offering tips on using credit cards recommends that you pay off your credit card debt every month.  But two recent surveys have found that some Americans don’t know whether they are following this oft given advice.
A survey of 1,000 Americans sponsored by CreditCards.com found that 5 percent didn’t know whether [...]

A recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research by Derek Rucker and Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University suggests that the cause of Americans consumer debt problems is low self esteem. The study found that individuals who felt powerless were willing to pay a premium for items [...]

Credit cards are a popular source of financing for startup ventures.  They don’t require a business plan and they offer readily available credit - either through personal credit cards or business credit cards.  A survey by the National Small Business Association found that 44 percent of small and mid-sized businesses are financed through credit cards [...]

The Institute for American Values and the Initiative For a New Thrift have just released their book, For A New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture. I went to their website after reading a news article about how the group should be getting more publicity - only to find out that I couldn’t read the [...]

The San Francisco Chronicle noted that credit card companies are sometimes taking the collection of credit card debt that is in arrears into their own hands.  No longer waiting for consumers to bring the account up to date on their own because of the threat of a damaged credit report or litigation, the credit card [...]

While Congress is examining the practices of credit card marketing toward college students, they should be examining the actions of the universities as well.
The Consumer Warning Network noted that Florida State University is profiting from the marketing of credit cards to its students, alumni, and supporters through an exclusive relationship between its athletic fundraisers and [...]

A poll by CreditCards.com released recently found that Americans are more likely to talk about sex with someone that they have just met then they are too talk about credit card debt. Of the 1,000 individuals polled, 80% declared they were somewhat or highly unlikely to discuss credit card debt with someone that they [...]

It was a chaotic time on the stock market last week with rumors that Lehman Brothers would be the next investment bank to succumb to the credit crisis a la Bear Stearns, the closing of IndyMac, and the collapse of the stocks of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac after the announcement that they [...]