Last month’s Fortune magazine reported on the credit crunch. The reporter remarked that it’s not just Americans who are having difficulties related to mortgages and debt in general. “British consumers are just as overstretched as Americans”, Fortune reports, with credit card delinquen- cies in the United Kingdom up 50%.
Fortune discussed a survey revealing that 6% of UK homeowners have been actually using their credit cards to make their mortgage payments. Even though I’ve been a bankruptcy attorney in Indiana for many, many years, I was just bowled over! Think about that one for a moment. Credit card interest rates, as we all know, are far, far higher than even the highest rate on a subprime mortgage! I can just feel things going from bad to worse for those poor people.
Please, if you’re reading this and relating to the crunch that 6% of Brits are experiencing, don’t even think about going down that road. I mean, don’t even think of using a credit card to pay a mortgage, or even to pay the bill from a different credit card company. Halt the downward spiral now! That’s what bankruptcy is designed to help you do.