You may have noticed that your monthly credit card statement looks different now, and contains a box full of new information, as mandated by the recent CARD Act legislation which went into effect on February 22 in the United States.
As Consumerism Commentary has written about, the new credit card statement includes the following useful payment information:
- How many years (estimated) it will take to pay off your entire balance if you make only minimum payments each month
- Total amount you would end up paying if you paid only minimum payments each month (this number can be shockingly large!)
- How much paying just a bit more could save you overall, and how much faster this would result in paying off the balance
This is the closest thing the credit card industry has to those scary warning labels on packs of cigarettes. I hope the new credit card statement box design with this added information will SCARE some irresponsible consumers into paying off their debts faster.
And I hope it serves as a wake up call that making only minimum payments each month is not the responsible or frugal decision... it could end up costing you hundreds or thousands of dollars over the life of your credit card debt.
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