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Kiwis spending less with credit cards, but struggling to repay interest

Posted in News

The amount of personal credit card balances outstanding fell in May from April, while the amount of advances incurring interest rose over the month, figures released by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) show.

Interest -bearing advances of NZ$3.518 billion made up 70.7% of the NZ$4.979 billion of total personal credit card advances in May, up slightly from April. This was below the recent high of 71.7% in February, but was still the second highest monthly proportion of advances incurring interest since February 2005.

Total personal advances outstanding fell slightly from April. The figures indicate consumers spent less with their credit cards, but failed to pay off existing balances.

Meanwhile, further RBNZ figures show total credit limits for personal and business credit cards fell by NZ$18 million in June from May to NZ$17.59 billion. This was its lowest level since August last year (see third tab on this interactive chart. There was a series break in the data in August 2008, contributing to the visible drop between July and August 2008.)

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Repay interest? who the hell

Repay interest? who the hell cares about that. Just borrow more from somewhere else and surf the wave of credit into the blue yonder. That's what the govt does! Kids know not to pay for stuff with money. Who the heck uses money?

"surf the wave of credit

"surf the wave of credit into the blue yonder"

Now have a look at the graph again....looks like a nice set of waves rising.

thats what happens wnen the

thats what happens wnen the central bankers loan you massive ammounts of their non backed electroniccally created credit then have their multinational corporate subsidiaries buy up your manufacturing base and move it to other nations that still have a slave labour advantage, which of course with the loss of jobs in NZ rips the means of repayment of that credit right out from under you.

Yes... Sadly, gen-x+y are about

Yes... Sadly, gen-x+y are about to find out... Learning Frugality is more fun than learning Austerity.