Tag: debt

Female Giraffe being gently nudged from male

New experiment finds progress more elusive than expected. Our recent study about debt holdings of older Americans focused our attention on how credit card debt could get people in trouble.  We, like other observers, bemoaned people’s tendency to pay the minimum required amount, and, like other observers, blamed these minimum payments on the prominence of…

Women's hands hold many shopping bags

After a good Christmas for retailers, the January regrets about overspending are inevitable.   What’s driving that regret was dramatized in a recent experiment to see if consumers could get control of their credit card balances. It was a flop. This experiment involved U.K. residents applying for credit cards who had selected the automatic payment option,…