With the recession forcing more and more Americans to burden their credit cards with debt, it’s time to ask whether the increasing accrued costs are manageable, or are detrimentally impacting lives.

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for a few years, you know times are hard. For those old enough to remember they aren’t Great Depression hard, but for most of us, poor economy, lack of opportunities and a loss of jobs equal a rolling snowball which carries with it exceeding pressure to find money we don’t have, and in turn means we turn to the plastic more than we would like.

And the numbers don’t lie. In the last decade, 22 million more Americans have got their hands on a credit card, bringing the figure to 181 million, up from 159 million in 2000. This doesn’t tell the whole story, as around half of the cardholders have more than one credit card, with 14 percent having up to ten credit cards, (yes you read that correctly, ten!) meaning the total number of credit cards in circulation in the U.S is estimated at around 1.5 billion. That means the potential for spending is gargantuan ($2.1 trillion in 2008 to be precise, up from 1.4 trillion in 2003) and in turn, the potential for crippling debt ($972 billion in 2008, up from less then $8 million in 1968).

Alarmingly, almost 15 percent of families have debt exceeding 40 percent of their income.

Read more here: http://www.usfst.com/news/Is-Credit-Card-debt-a-hindrance/

Hmmm, I wonder what Canada looks like?