Fascinating

I must be bored because I'm following the thread on an MSN chatboard on what people will do with their govt stimulus refund.

The article has suggestions on what to do with the refund...and asked for other thoughts. It was remarkably easy to add a comment - so I did. I suggested betting the giant's to cover the super bowl spread and then parlay it into apple computer.

I love reading other people's suggestions. Of the serious ones, the most people seemed to want to pay off credit card debt. Why do so many people carry CC debt? CC debt is the equivalent of paying $1.30 for every $1 you spend. When you buy a book for $10 and carry CC debt, you're paying $13. If you buy dinner for $50, you're paying $65. It's literally voluntarily paying extra tax.

I can understand taking some in the short term if you are a student or otherwise short on money and have a fairly reasonable expectation to make more money in the near future. In those cases, sometimes you need to spend money to get by and then pay it back in the near future. But I suspect 90% of such debt does not fall into this category and could be avoided.