Use It Wisely

As mentioned from my previous post, I got the Citi Dividend MasterCard. As I was about to activate my card, I noticed something interesting.

Did you see it? Let me zoom in a little bit…



There’s a “Use it Wisely” message on the activation number sticker that you will peel off.

Of all the credit cards I’ve gotten, this was the only attempt by an issuer to remind me to use a credit card wisely. Most large credit card issuers have plenty of educational material on credit responsibility and management – you just gotta look for it. Appearantly, it’s not really their top prority if you charge their credit card wisely or not. I was surprised to see Citibank informing their customer on responsible credit usage, and I was even more amused that they choose to put that short message on a disposable sticker. Ah well, at least they made an effort.

So should credit card companies make more effort in education their customers on responsbile credit usage? Yes. Is America’s consumer debt the credit card companies fault? No, not really. (At least, I don’t think so).

Yeah, they really should stop bombarding us with offers after offers. They really should stop coming up with ways to entice people to spend their money. (Longer introductory rates, lower minimum payment requirements, reward points, cash back, travel benefits, etc. etc..) Regardless, at the end, we’re the ones swiping that card.

Yeah, sometimes the fine prints are too small, sometimes there are nasty surprises, and sometimes it’s just pure scam (delay posting payments so customers are charged late fees – FirstUSA anyone?).

But the majority of times, the majority of the reason why we’re a debt nation, could be avoided easily if we just “Use It Wisely”.