Credit Cards can be in the wrong hands, a trap to get people into debt and be a slave to credit cards for the rest of their life, like many people who first get a credit card, it's fun to spend the money and be flash with your card and credit, but that credit hs to be paid back with interest if you make late payments and other charges that the banks or your credit service would charge to recoup money from the slackers who get themselves in a pickle and in debt.

Whilst they say a bit of debt does you good if you make your payments on time particularly if you want to keep a good credit rating for a big loan later on down the line, most people just get caught up in the spending and the things that they may need so they get a couple of credit cards and go off on a spending spree and worry about paying off the amount they've spent later.

I was guilty of this in my student days, I first got a credit card when I was 19 and just went a little crazy with it, I ended up being £5000 in debt, although that doesn't sound alot and not as much as some other people who end up thousands of pounds or dollars in debt through credit cards, but still it was enough to learn my own personal lesson with debt and make sure I didn't get into that predicament again.

I had to budget my costs as I only had a part time job that paid £110 a week and back then there was no tax credits to top your earnings, so whatever you earnt that was it. It was back then I met my now wife and so I didn't want to share my debt with her because that would be cheeky, so I didn't tell her about my little debt at the time and just managed it on my own, but then the unthinkable happened, she got a couple of credit cards too and she didn't tell me about it and so while I was paying my debt off and I did, I struggled on my pathetic wages whilst paying my debt off whilst also trying to pay bills and buy food, the usual stuff you need to live.

2 years had passed and I was debt free, whooo hoo!! and that was short lived as we now had our first child and that's also about the time that I found out she had these 2 credit cards and she owed...wait for it....wait for it!!!  £17,000!!!! my heart sank that day as my son who was about 8 months old, not a care in the world looking at me laughing his head off and farting in his nappy.

Now my son was born in 2001, so now we've only just paid that debt off and so that nearly 9 years we've had to do without some months as I've either been out of work or had another job that just didn't pay well at all and was physically and emotionally draining, so the take home advice is credit cards are good in moderation if you really take hold and handle debt management like a serious thing, because in life you have to learn by your mistakes and more often than not you live a better life from your mistakes.

Today I don't have any credit cards I just take out one loan at a time if we need something, because we both made a decision not to ever go down the credit card route again as this would prove disastrous for our own personal finance.

Credit cards and debt management go hand in hand I think, so long as you know your cash flow limits and what you can afford, then all is well in your own spending world.