Should I cut up my credit cards?

The temptation is immediate, as soon as we find ourselves in a difficult predicament, we want to remove ourselves from the situation as quick as possible - we want to find a quick remedy. When it comes to credit card debt, many people may be experiencing this for the first time and might not think through their actions before doing them. A classic example would be for someone upon finding themselves in a financial predicament, to cut up all credit cards so that they cannot use them anymore. Whilst this might be an okay short-term solution, it can sometimes have the wrong desired psychological effect. You may have removed the credit cards from your wallet and cut them up, but this does not mean that the dependency on borrowing money that you don't have has been removed with the shredding of said credit cards.

To me cutting up credit cards, is a knee-jerk reaction, whilst it may remove your short-term dependency on the pieces of plastic it does not mean your spending patterns and attitude towards money has changed. So the next time, you take immediate action and make a quick response to predicament you find yourself in, be it financial or otherwise, make sure you've carefully considered if you've eradicated the problem or just buried it slightly only for it to resurface later.