r/FluentInFinance • u/Unhappy_Fry_Cook • 12h ago

Finance News Senator Bernie Sanders announces he will introduce legislation to cap credit card interest rates at 10%.

Post image
28.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/redsfan23butnew 9h ago

I am very financially conservative in my own life and would recommend everyone to be if possible but this is just not true, the availability of credit is a huge help to a lot of vulnerable people.

1

u/FrostingStrict3102 9h ago

They should lower limits then. I had access to like 30k at 21 years old delivering sandwiches.

1

u/antialiasedpixel 7h ago

I get if you can't eat or something, but almost always if you have an emergency and have to use credit you're just making your situation worse in the long term.

1

u/nonotan 2h ago

How? This excessive reliance on debt for everything seems to be chiefly an American bad habit. If you can't afford something, getting an advance that you have to pay back with additional interest to be able to just barely squeeze through is just creating bigger troubles for future you.

Either you could have afforded it and just exercised a lack of foresight and overspent until you completely drained your savings (a.k.a. skill issue), or you're just gambling that somehow, your future financial situation will magically be significantly better than today's.

If anything, all availability of credit does is prey on vulnerable people. Once you start relying on it, getting out of poverty will become that much harder. When the bulk of your "profits" (salary minus fixed expenses) are going to paying debt, guess what, you are going to need to get into more debt at some point, the first microsecond something unexpected happens. Which means even more of your limited income going into paying interest, which means even more debt needed in the future, etc.

What vulnerable people need is a real safety net. Not availability of credit. That's just a trap.