--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Jonquilyn Hill, filling in as host.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Hi, I'm Nick Wolney, and I'm a managing editor at CNET and a finance journalist. I'm here to talk about the rapid growth of credit card debt.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So, Nick, there was this brief moment a couple of years ago when it looked like Americans just might finally get their credit card spending in check.
--:-- Nick Wolney: That's right. We were spending less during COVID, and those federal stimulus checks meant a lot of us were actually making more money. But then when those ended and inflation reared its ugly head and came back around, it really caught people off guard.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And they're digging themselves deeper and deeper into debt in order to make ends meet.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Over the past year and a half, as Americans were putting more on their credit cards than ever before, interest rates rose on those cards by nearly a third.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I could put all of my entire paycheck towards paying it off for the entire year, and it would still take me about two years to pay it all off, plus interest.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Coming up on Today Explained, we're revisiting an episode from earlier this year about how Americans racked up over a trillion dollars in credit card debt and what it'll take to get out of it.
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--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Having a night out with your friends is awesome, dealing with hangovers sucks.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Meet Senorita, the THC-infused margarita that lets you skip the booze but keep the vibe.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Made with real fruit, organic agave, and Himalayan pink salt, every sip is like a mini getaway.
--:-- Nick Wolney: No fillers, no hangovers, just full flavor and a better buzz.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Find your flavor at SenoritaDrinks.com. Use code VOX20 for 20% off.
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--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It's Today Explained. I'm Jonquilyn Hill, filling in as host. And today, we're talking to this guy.
--:-- Nick Wolney: I'm Nick Wolney, and I'm a managing editor at CNET and a finance journalist.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Nick's been following the rapid growth of credit card debt, talking to banks and credit card companies and regular people dealing with debt.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And he says the first thing you've got to understand about credit cards right now is interest rates.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: In Q1 of 2024, the Federal Reserve reported that the average credit card rate is 21.59 percent. This is a record high.
--:-- Nick Wolney: We've been above 20 percent for a year. And for retail cards, Target, or you go to wherever it is, and I'm just trying to buy dish soap, and they're like, you know, do you want this card? Do you want the red card?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: You know, all those retail cards, those tend to have an average closer to 30%.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so in the moment, if someone is cash-strapped, or particularly there tends to be something like sign-on bonus or perhaps a credit, an opportunity to save some extra money in the moment, And a lot of people will fall prey to that and not realize that they have this 30% interest charge that is accruing on this, and they just have this lagging credit card debt that persists as a result.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I wonder, do people understand what they're getting into when they get these high-limit, high-interest credit cards and then don't pay off their balance every month?
--:-- Nick Wolney: Do people even realize that they're getting a high-limit, high-interest credit card? I don't think so.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So when I interviewed a financial planner at Northwestern Mutual last year, she pointed out that her clients would regularly say, oh, I'm good. I'm making the minimum payment. I'm good.
--:-- Nick Wolney: I'm paying my credit card. And she's like, no, that's the minimum payment.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And these are the people who are probably more fiscally savvy if they've hired a financial advisor, right?
--:-- Nick Wolney: If you've hired a financial advisor at Northwestern Mutual, you're probably at least thinking about your money and about your expenses and things like that.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And those people are saying, oh, I'm good. I'm making the minimum payment. I'm good.
--:-- Nick Wolney: It's quite hard to visualize how much something actually costs when you're just making these very, very small payments.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And it's difficult for us, I think, to realize the total amount of interest and how much extra interest we would pay.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So let's say you're carrying a $1,000 balance on your credit card. Two years ago, if you were making minimum payments, it would have cost you $729 in interest to pay it off.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: At today's rates, you are paying almost $1,200 in interest.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Credit cards didn't used to be as profitable as they are right now.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And it also used to be that the minimum monthly payment was 5% of your balance.
--:-- Nick Wolney: In the 1980s, some very smart mathematicians realized that if they made two tweaks to credit card culture, there'd be a lot more profit to be made.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And those two tweaks were to lower the minimum monthly payment from 5% to 2%.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And then to increase people's credit limit.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And so it makes the consumer feel good in the moment because rather than being almost maxed out on your credit card, if you have a much higher limit, you're not as maxed out.
--:-- Nick Wolney: You've got a lot of wiggle room. And then if your minimum monthly payment is less, then it's like, oh, this is not so bad.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It's only 2% of my balance rather than 5% of my balance.
--:-- Nick Wolney: What that all meant is that people were more likely to have higher balances.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: The average household is now carrying about $6,500 in credit card debt, that is the highest in almost four decades.
--:-- Nick Wolney: As you were doing that explanation, I couldn't help but hear the voice of my mom.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Like, I remember the first time my credit card limit got raised, and I didn't add. They were just like, yeah, hey, girl, you want some more thousands to spend?
--:-- Nick Wolney: And my mom was like, no, that's what they want. Like, don't do it.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Someone I spoke to last year as well talked about his name is Josue Henriquez, lives in San Francisco.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And he talked about how, you know, when he emigrated to the U.S., you know, he wanted to build his credit to eventually buy a house one day.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And so he took out a credit card when he was 18 and he got a $500 limit, which, you know, like does not exist anymore.
--:-- Nick Wolney: But over time, as his limit increased, as he got more credit card offers, you know, fast forward 10 years, he's $25,000 in debt.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: He has to work with a debt consolidation company to pay it all down.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Completely wrecks his credit score because of what's needed in order to work with those creditors and things like that.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And then during COVID, he lost his job.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so even though he had paid it all down, you know, after seven or eight months, he was back to $20,000 in credit card debt just to make ends meet.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And I think that him sharing that story with me just felt like something that is a paradigm for what a lot of people are experiencing with credit cards.
--:-- Nick Wolney: You know, they just trying to make ends meet. They're just trying to survive.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: They're slowly trying to pay it down and pay a little bit extra every month or every other month.
--:-- Nick Wolney: But because people have so little in savings, you know, you're one car problem away from being knocked all the way back to the beginning, so to speak.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: My name is Sam, calling from Greenville, South Carolina.
--:-- Sam: I had to use credit cards to get me through college because the federal government would not loan me enough money to make ends meet.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I am now working almost 80 hours a week just to make the minimum payments on my credit card.
--:-- Olena: Hi, my name is Olena. I am from Atlantic, Georgia.
--:-- Olena: And I am actually about to file for bankruptcy because of just the high cost of living.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It has put me into really deep credit card debt.
--:-- Olena: I can't even make the minimum payment anymore.
--:-- Lillian: Hi, my name is Lillian. I'm 26 years old.
--:-- Lillian: I live in Nashville, Tennessee.
--:-- Lillian: I currently pay off my credit card every month at the end of the month.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: But it has been a major problem with me saving money, just not being able to save those extra $2,000 a month because it's all going towards the credit card.
--:-- Lillian: So, yeah, just trying to keep more in touch with what I'm spending every month.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: But it's hard to do when all of your spending, including your groceries, your gas, your day-to-day expenses, go on the credit card.
--:-- Nick Wolney: One group that's having a hard time when it comes to credit card debt is Gen Z.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that one in every seven Gen Z credit card borrowers are completely maxed out on their balances.
--:-- Nick Wolney: One factor to this is that Gen Z credit card holders have much lower limits to begin with.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So the median credit limit for Gen Z was $4,500, whereas it's over $16,000 for all the other generations.
--:-- Nick Wolney: But it illustrates how younger borrowers get trapped in this cycle right from the start, especially when they either aren't earning enough or they're using a card as their emergency fund since they don't have that safety net established yet.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: There was also a recent study from TransUnion, which found that 84% of 22 to 24-year-olds had a credit card in 2023.
--:-- Nick Wolney: When that same age bracket was measured with millennials back in 2013, only 61% of them had a credit card.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So it's not really a kids being kids argument.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Whether they want to or they need to, Gen Z consumers are opening up and using their credit cards sooner than previous generations.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I want to talk about the almighty credit score, like which is part of the reason people even get credit cards in the first place.
--:-- Nick Wolney: You know, you need it to get a car, you need to get a house, like you need it for all these things.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: What is this doing to people's credit scores?
--:-- Nick Wolney: Utilization is a pretty chunky part of credit score.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It accounts for 30% of the overall FICO score.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So in the moment, as long as people are paying their credit cards and they're not maxing themselves out in terms of their balances, it won't necessarily impact their credit score.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Delinquency does impact the credit score, right?
--:-- Nick Wolney: If you start missing payments, then you're going to get dinged for that.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It's also a great point that credit score culture in general is, it's kind of twisted.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And for most people, when they're young, the easiest way to build up your credit history and to get a line of credit of some kind is the credit card.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: That's the fastest way to open up a line of credit in most cases.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so we kind of have this culture that, I mean, not even just culture, it's just in terms of how people buy a house, how people buy a car, your credit score, it's very much your financial rating, you know, it's your track record.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And so it's kind of difficult for us to divorce ourselves from credit card culture because of that.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Yeah, I guess it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, okay, in the grand scheme, you probably need a credit card before your frontal lobe develops.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: But it's like, should you have a credit card before your frontal lobe develops? I don't know.
--:-- Nick Wolney: I think of me at 21. No, take that away from her.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Well, and last year I spoke to a financial educator who teaches classes in high schools, teaches financial literacy classes in high schools.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And something she pointed out, She said this happens in every single class.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Kids will, well, they won't raise their hand in the class.
--:-- Nick Wolney: They'll come up to her afterwards, you know, and they'll say, you know, my parents gave me this credit card and it's just, it feels like it's just like free money, you know.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And it's like, oh, you know, so the parent, it feels like they're doing a good job in terms of opening up a credit card and helping their child with their credit history.
--:-- Nick Wolney: But for many of those kids, they don't, they don't understand why they have the credit card and they don't understand how to use it.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And, you know, I would assert that young people are perhaps more impulsive, you know, at times as they start to come into adulthood and things like that.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so just having that financial literacy piece in place, you know, is really, really important.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: More with CNET's Nick Wolney when Today Explained returns.
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--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Support for Today Explained comes from Sierra.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Visit Sierra to learn more.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Support for the show today comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR.
--:-- Nick Wolney: What's in your LifeKit?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I'm asking.
--:-- Nick Wolney: They didn't ask that.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Instead, you can listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Life Kit offers real stories about common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career.
--:-- Nick Wolney: If you're looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance on living better, Life Kit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: From fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout, each episode is full of relevant insights and clear takeaways about things we all could use a little help with.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Life Kit wants to help you approach your own life with confidence and clarity and walk away with a game plan you can implement right away.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Enough from me. Go listen to the show, Life Kit.
--:-- Nick Wolney: It's a podcast from NPR.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Today Explained, we're back with CNET's Nick Wolney, talking credit cards.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Okay, Nick, wasn't there legislation post-financial crisis that was supposed to fix all of this and ease the burden on credit card holders?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I mean, there was, and it did ease some of the burden.
--:-- Nick Wolney: But when you're 100 feet down the rabbit hole and you get a law that gets passed and you come 10 feet back up, you're still quite far down the rabbit hole.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: The Card Act. Credit card accountability, responsibility, and disclosure act.
--:-- Nick Wolney: That was in 2009.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Statements will be required to tell credit card holders how long it will take to pay off a balance and what it'll cost in interest if they only make the minimum monthly payments.
--:-- Nick Wolney: We also put a stop to retroactive rate hikes that appear on a bill suddenly with no rhyme or reason.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It gave consumers at least 21 days from the date of statement to actually pay their bill.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And this law ends the practice of shifting payment dates.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: This always used to bug me. You know, when you'd get like, suddenly it was due on the 19th, when it had been the 31st.
--:-- Nick Wolney: It limited excessive marketing to young adults.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: There was a lot of marketing towards college students, right, who might be more susceptible to getting a credit card before they have a fully robust financial education, financial literacy.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So it did make a little bit of a dent, but unfortunately we're dealing with quite a large boulder here.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And so, you know, there's more work to be done, certainly.
--:-- Nick Wolney: How did we get to the point where there can be these wild, wild interest rates?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Regulations have loosened on credit card interest rates, and there are a few reasons why.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So some history here. There's a Supreme Court opinion that came out in 1978, Marquette National Bank versus First of Omaha Corp.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And this opinion allowed national banks to be governed by the usury laws of the state that they are headquartered.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so famously, in the late 70s, Citibank was just absolutely drowning.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Inflation was extremely high circa 1980.
--:-- Nick Wolney: It was actually so high that banks like Citibank were losing money on every single dollar that was on a credit card because they were capped on how much interest they could charge their consumers.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So Citibank famously courted the governor of South Dakota and said, hey, we'd love to move our headquarters to South Dakota.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Will your legislature invite us to come to South Dakota?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And they agreed.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So they abolished the usury laws in South Dakota.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Citibank moved there. Several other banks moved there. Delaware followed. Nevada followed.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so as a result, no matter what state you live in, if you have a credit card from that bank and that bank is headquartered in Delaware or South Dakota, that bank can charge whatever it wants to on the credit card.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And as a result, you have this very deregulated landscape that allows national banks to jack up those credit card rates.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So we're at a record high right now.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: But have Americans always carried credit card debt since these cards have been available of course that's what what else is it for right like all the way back in the 1950s you know those very first credit cards that came out there was a card called Diner's Club.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Which was one of the first forms of a credit card.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It's easy to spot a member of the club.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Last year, Diners Club members had over 10 million fine meals, took over 500,000 vacations, and saved many helpings of chop suey.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And it was really, it was very much branded as this social club card, right?
--:-- Nick Wolney: You could go out, you'd be in the Diners Club and things like that.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And it was branded very much as an identity.
--:-- Nick Wolney: That was also akin to just a lot of the marketing and branding in general in the 1950s.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Like when you put your Amex on the card and everyone's like, oh it's so heavy it's metal you know you made it when your cards go from sounding like this to sounding like this or do you see this is a trend on TikTok now uh Gen Z is showing off their Amexes as a flex that sounds like a good way to get uh your credit card information stolen right that's what I thought like don't flash your platinum Amex to me you know and so and so it's that's kind of interesting for them as well it's like the social clout of having the platinum Amex is worth the $695 annual fee to that.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: But if you look at the total credit card debt in America, it's just gone up and up and up and up and up.
--:-- Nick Wolney: We had two corrections. We had a correction in the housing crisis, and then we also had a correction during COVID where people were like, oh, crap, I better pay this down in case I lose my job.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And so we did see corrections there, but otherwise we have seen that number steadily go up.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Another reason we're trying to sound the alarm now is that people are really struggling right now.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Historically, in Q1 of each year, we see a little bit of a payoff.
--:-- Nick Wolney: People come off the holidays. They're like, oh, God, what have I done?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And they're actually responsible.
--:-- Nick Wolney: There's some of that New Year's resolution energy as well.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: People tend to pay down some of the balance.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So we usually see a dimple in that line graph.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And for the last two years, so Q1 of 2023 and this Q1 as well, people didn't really do that.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So even most recently, we went from $1.13 trillion to $1.12 trillion.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And this is the quarter where people are supposed to be really making a dent and paying down their balances.
--:-- Nick Wolney: So it's concerning to some economists that people are not following that usual behavior, that people are actually needing their credit card in order to make ends meet.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And there also some concern that in terms of consumer spending which accounts for a large part of overall GDP that that is perhaps being propped up somewhat by people using their credit cards and spending money that they don't necessarily have.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Are there states or lawmakers who are advocating for capping these interest rates right now?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Yeah, I mean, it's happened multiple times.
--:-- Nick Wolney: It tends to die in legislation or when it gets to a certain House committee or a Senate committee.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: We have a couple of different ones that have been introduced over the years.
--:-- Nick Wolney: The most recent one is the Capping Credit Card Interest Rates Act.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: That was introduced by Senator Hawley of Missouri.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Which was not on my bingo card that he would be the one to introduce that.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: 18% ought to be the cap.
--:-- Nick Wolney: My bill would cap it across the board, all credit cards, cap fees as well, so the credit card companies can't come in through the back door and charge you more.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: This is basic fairness for working people in this country.
--:-- Nick Wolney: The last time it was introduced, it was introduced by Bernie Sanders and AOC.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Sometimes politicians will introduce these laws, even though they know they're going to die in a vote, because it's a good political gambit for them, right?
--:-- Nick Wolney: So Senator Hawley, when he's out on the campaign trail, people say, like, you're not fighting for the little guy.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: He'd be like, yeah, I did. You know, I introduced this bill.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Even though there's a tremendous amount of lobbying money from banks, understandably, that is flowing through D.C. at any given moment.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So while we do see some of these different pieces of legislation emerge, you go online to look at the status of the bill, and it's been introduced.
--:-- Nick Wolney: The stage that it's in is, okay, it's been introduced, and it's with the committee, and it's unlikely that it's going to see the light of day again.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Is there a policy fix to this?
--:-- Nick Wolney: There is. There is a policy fix. Whether or not we can bring it to fruition, I think, is the challenge.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So the most immediate policy fix would be to cap interest rates and to just allow us to stop the bleeding in terms of consumers falling deeper and deeper into debt.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Taking a really good look at what are the limits that we are extending to consumers.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: We've got another, I'll just say it, we've got another villain in the picture and that villain's name is Buy Now, Pay Later.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Explore your favorite stores in the Klarna app.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Once you have chosen what you would like to buy, or if you know how much you'd like to spend, select Pay with Klarna to create a one-time card.
--:-- Nick Wolney: The Klarna of it all.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Yeah.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so we've, you know, what's tricky about Buy Now, Pay Later is that those companies have been skirting reporting requirements.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And so for many people, we can't even see how much that they have out on Buy Now, Pay Later.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Bloomberg did a Harris poll last month where they found that a third of respondents said they have over $1,000 out on Buy Now, Pay Later.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And this is four payments over six weeks.
--:-- Nick Wolney: It's purposely four payments so that they can skirt under the Truth in Lending Act, which once you get to five payments or more on any form of debt or any kind of loan, then you have a bunch of additional regulatory requirements that you have to adhere to.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So that's why you almost always see it be four payments, usually over a six-week period.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so it's sort of a cousin to the credit card, right?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: So now people already have all their credit card debt, and you can use your credit card for buy now, pay later as well.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Is there a way to get off this credit card ride?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Is there a way you can just opt out and say, I'm not doing this?
--:-- Nick Wolney: No, no. If you have credit card debt, then it's just going back to the bones of personal finance, right?
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I like to say that when we come down to it, personal finance, it's just eight words. Make more money, lower expenses, invest the difference.
--:-- Nick Wolney: And so if you're trying to pay down that debt and you want to put some extra money toward that debt, then taking a good look at your budget, seeing where you could lower expenses, perhaps bringing some extra money into the picture, that's going to be the most impactful way to make a dent on those balances.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Stop using the credit card.
--:-- Nick Wolney: Maybe if you're someone who uses the digital wallet a lot, maybe it's time to take those cards out of your wallet just so that you're not tempted in the moment to shop or to spend, things like that.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It could also be time to do some of those maybe more unsavory financial activities.
--:-- Nick Wolney: You call your cell phone company to see if you can get your bill lowered.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: You call the credit card company to see if you can get the APR lowered.
--:-- Nick Wolney: There's plenty of free scripts and stuff like that online.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I know it doesn't sound like much, but $50 or $100 a month of savings, it really adds up.
--:-- Nick Wolney: It's over $1,000 a year when you add it up.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And for many people, that can help make the biggest difference.
--:-- Nick Wolney: We need some policy change that is about the cost of living as well, not just about the credit card as the instrument, because I think, you know, despite their best intentions, consumers are going to keep using that tool to make ends meet for as long as it's available to them and for as long as prices are at where they're at right now.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: That's CNET's Nick Wolney. You can read his latest on credit cards, Maxed Out, Inside America's Credit Card Debt Crisis and What We Do Next over at CNET.com.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Today's episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlain, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Amina Alsadi, and engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: I'm John Glyn Hill, and this is Today Explained.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: And when I'm not filling in for the very cool Today Explained hosts, I host my own podcast for Vox called Explain It To Me.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It's your go-to hotline for all your questions, big or small.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: We answer everything from how to make friends to rank choice voting's impact on political polarization.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: If you have a question you want answered, email askvox at vox.com or call 1-800-618-8545.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Thank you.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: It brings all the ways you use money into a single product that feels extraordinary to use.
--:-- Jonquilyn Hill: Visit Mercury.com to join over 200,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business.
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