Here is an interesting trend… Or is it?
More Consumers Pay Off Their Credit Cards and Let Their Mortgages Go
By Jane Bryant Quinn
If unemployment hits, which bills do you cover first? Traditionally, that would be food, utilities, transportation, and housing. If you couldn’t stretch your income to cover credit card payments–well, you let them go.
Such thinking is so pre-2008. Since the real estate meltdown, growing numbers of straitened borrowers are changing their priorities. They’re protecting their credit cards and letting their houses go. For anyone who loses a job and has no savings to fall back on, that choice makes a lot of sense.
Pre-2008, your house was your piggy bank as well as your home. If you needed money, you just had to tap your home equity line of credit.
Now, however, you might have no home equity left. If you need emergency money (and, ahem, haven’t saved that mythical six-months worth of income in the bank), your credit card is your fastest source of cash. Read more here… http://moneywatch.bnet.com
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f12dea06-3d7f-42a8-9676-8a444754d8c9)
