What living on the limit costs you

I've argued the mechanism. This chapter is the bill, and the first line is the one you've been paying without adding up.

The interest. Add the interest line on the last twelve statements. For a balance of four thousand at twenty per cent, it's around eight hundred pounds, and that's for the privilege of having bought last year's things a bit before you could. Over the decade you've carried a balance, it's several thousand pounds that bought nothing.

Never zero. There's a state in which you owe nothing to anyone with a card, and you haven't been in it for years, and you may not remember what it felt like. It feels like the green number being yours.

The anxiety. StepChange's page describes people who come to them with sleepless nights and a fear of talking about the debt with the people they love. You may not be there. But a balance that never falls is a low hum in the background of a life, and it's there at three in the morning, and it's there when the letter comes, and it's there when someone mentions money at dinner.

No cover. Chapter 8. The card that was for emergencies is full of coats, and when the emergency comes there's nothing behind you but the last bit of the gap and a higher minimum.

The credit file. StepChange notes that missed and late payments are recorded as defaults and make future borrowing harder. You haven't missed any. But a card run near its limit for years is on the file too, and the mortgage lender reads it, and reads it as what it is.

The decisions made by the limit. This is the cost people miss. For a decade, what you could afford has been set by a number a bank chose, and you've bought coats and meals and trips up to that number rather than up to your income, and the difference between the two is the balance, and the balance is the record of a decade of decisions that weren't quite yours.

The conversations not had. A balance you'd rather not name is a balance you don't mention to the person you live with, and the not mentioning is a small distance in the house, and StepChange's callers describe exactly that, the fear of talking about it with the people they love. The card has been between you and someone, in a quiet way, for years.

And the things the interest would have bought. Eight hundred pounds a year, for ten years, is a figure that would make a difference to most lives, and it went to a card company for the service of hiding the total from you.