During the holidays, November and December, the use of credit cards is understandably under some stress. But January? When most people have just made their resolutions to get their spending and use of credit under control..

Not this year!

The Federal Reserve reports that borrowing rose in January as Americans spent twice as much on their credit cards as they did in December.

Consumer credit grew by $6.9 billion to $2.52 trillion. The reason? Analysts said people once dependent on home-equity loans were turning to other forms of short-term financing after the sub-prime mortgage crisis made it harder to qualify for loans.

Maybe more should live follow the dictates of their parents and grandparents–live within the dictates of their means.

If you’re on the debt treadmill consider taking the barter path, paying for some of your on-going expenses with barter (trade dollars) and then take the cash saved and pay off those high-interest credit cards. See the BarterNews FastStart Barter Program for the blueprint to follow: FastSTART

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 12:54 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs & Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.