Financial Freedom SG

Saw this article on Straits Times that each Singaporean has about 6 to 7 cards on average.

This helped to the banks to post a monthly card billing of $2.87 billion in November 2010, up 20% from the same time in the previous year in 2009.

The interesting thing is that there are 906,000 taxpayers who were assessed to have yearly income of at least $30,000, which makes these people eligible for a credit card.

That means if you throw a coin in a crowd, there is a one in five chance it’d land one someone with a credit card.

Also in the same article it mentioned that the roll over balances have increased by 7.5% which points to some people who are using the credit cards to spend beyond their income.

At the cost of 24% interest.

If we take the monthly card billing of $2.87 billion, a 7.5% increase means that banks are earning $215 million more each month. I wonder what the base rate of the rollover is. No wonder the banks can earn so much.    

Before getting the Maybank credit card, I had only the ANZ credit card so I am below the average in terms of number of credit cards in my wallet.

Used wisely, the credit card becomes a way to pay later and accumulate points in exchange for reward items or cash rebates. The flip side is when you have too many cards, swipe without keep a tab on your spending and have rollover balances that will be charged 24% interest.

2 cards is the maximum I will have. More than that, I’d lose track :)  How many cards do you have?

Source:

http://www.valuebuddies.com/thread-530-post-4358.html#pid4358