Spoken like someone who does not have to make a choice between groceries or gassing up the car.
Credit cards are predatory toward low-income individuals on purpose. When my vehicle needed $3000USD in repairs a few years ago, I did not have that money just laying around, so it went on the credit card. It would have taken me one month to pay that off if I did not also need to pay a mortgage, utility bills, student loans, groceries, and medical bills, on top of minor daily expenses people like you seem to forget exists when they want to punch down at someone less fortunate than them. When you already have nearly every dollar you make ear-marked, that "6 months interest free" crap might as well be a fart in the wind.
So, cc's are doing exactly what they are supposed to do; keep us in a position of minimum payments because emergency high-dollar expenses will, inevitably, happen if you are a living human not fortunate enough to have been birthed in a higher tax bracket.
I mean, I'm in the 12% tax bracket and handling my credit cards just fine. Then again, I'm also accumulating some savings and not spending my entire paycheck let alone beyond my means.
If you are paying interest on credit cards, that means either of two things:
A) You're one of the unluckiest men in the world having one shit thrown at you after another. I sympathize and hope you can get that balance paid off soon.
B) You're terrible with money and can't budget nor save to save your own life. I don't sympathize, but I will encourage you to learn how to budget and grow the necessary maturity to cut down expenses you don't truly need and can't afford.
Also, banks hate credit card holders carrying balances. Banks make their money off merchant and transaction fees, not interest payments; they very much prefer card holders who pay their statement balance in full every time.
Maybe my choice of words was insufficient, my apologies.
What I mean is making money off of interest is not their first choice. Interest money is not guaranteed, there is no collateral securing that debt. If the debtor (card holder) can't or doesn't pay up, the bank lost that money.
Banks prefer making money off of fees which are guaranteed revenue, and they strongly incentivize card holders to not carry balances over by waiving interest if statement balances are paid in full every time.
You're certainly wasting everyone else's time, you don't even know why credit cards have interest rates as high as they do. (No, it's not to prey on low income people.)
Credit cards are predatory toward low-income individuals on purpose. When my vehicle needed $3000USD in repairs a few years ago, I did not have that money just laying around, so it went on the credit card. It would have taken me one month to pay that off if I did not also need to pay a mortgage, utility bills, student loans, groceries, and medical bills, on top of minor daily expenses people like you seem to forget exists when they want to punch down at someone less fortunate than them. When you already have nearly every dollar you make ear-marked, that "6 months interest free" crap might as well be a fart in the wind.
So, cc's are doing exactly what they are supposed to do; keep us in a position of minimum payments because emergency high-dollar expenses will, inevitably, happen if you are a living human not fortunate enough to have been birthed in a higher tax bracket.