I love headlines like this one today at NYT: “As Economy Slows, Lenders Begin to Curb Credit Cards.”
This I read and laugh as I envision the pile of credit card offers waiting for me in my mailbox when I get home. You know the routine: pull out piles of junk mail, all of it labeled “Urgent!” or “Important Offer Inside!”; carry junk mail up to my apartment; fumble with keys as junk mail takes up one arm; enter apartment and toss junk mail on the “designated junk mail” table, otherwise known as the dining room table I once knew and loved; sigh heavily at the mess sitting before me; later shout expletives as I shred these offers and try to bring order to the chaos that is my life.
I mean really: credit card companies pulling back on offers? This only a few days after the same NYT ran a story about a woman in bankruptcy who said it’s disgusting how she still gets sleezy offers in the mail for plastic – even while she is obviously going through a major financial disaster.
Really? If they stop sending me offers I will bow down and kiss the ground whose future otherwise would’ve been the junk mail landfill. These companies owe me hundreds of hours of time I’ve wasted cleaning up this crap over the years. I’ll be happy to hear some paper might be spared now that the credit markets are nearly paralyzed. But some part of me doesn’t believe this is really the case.