Latest Debt News
Credit card caution needed at Christmas
20/12/2005 14:42:00
A financial website is urging consumers not to go overboard this Christmas and land themselves in debt in time for the new year.
Research from MoneyExpert.com shows that credit card spending, from 1993 to 2004, went up by 19.8 per cent in December, while debt charities are faced with a flood of calls during January.
The Consumer Credit Counselling Service, for example, saw a 77 per cent rise in the number of calls made about debt from December 2003 to the same month last year. On January 4th alone, 1,000 calls were made, a record number.
Sean Gardner, chief executive at MoneyExpert.com, said: "People should be careful about making spur-of-the-moment purchases just because things look like a great deal in the last-minute pre-Christmas sales.
"If you are financing Christmas on plastic, be really choosy about how you do it. Store cards should be avoided if you don't aim to pay off the balance straight away."
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