Christmas will no longer be on credit for many shoppers, despite tempting offers from retailers and credit card companies trying to coax the plastic out of consumers’ wallets.
The New York Times reports the lowest percentage of shoppers in the 27-year-history of a national survey said they used credit cards over the Thanksgiving weekend, while the use of general credit cards like Visa and MasterCard fell 11 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to the credit bureau TransUnion.
Britt Beemer, chief executive of America’s Research Group, a survey firm, told the Times “The consumer really feels a lot of pressure from previous debts, and they just aren’t going to dig themselves into that kind of hole.”