Changes in Credit Card Policies During this Recession
It is being reported that credit lenders including Bank of America, Citibank, and even store credit lenders are tightening their guidelines for credit applicants. They are also lowering credit card limits by up to 5% every quarter.
Basically, if you do not have good credit, it will be very difficult to obtain a credit card. It is also unlikely that you will receive an exceptionally high credit limit, even if you do have excellent credit.
We don't necessarily believe that these stricter guidelines are a bad thing, seeing that a big reason for our current economical crisis in America is that lenders were giving credit to risky borrowers in the first place that ended up defaulting on their loans.
This is yet another reason to become less reliant on credit cards. As with any recession, the economy will rise again in due time (unless we go into a full-blown depression, which cannot be certainly predicted at this point). However, training ourselves to save and use cash only as often as possible ensures that our personal finances will thrive -- during the good economic times, or the bad.
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