This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Credit Card Edition

We as Americans kind of suck at having credit. This graphic shows just how bad it is, and gives us some direction on how to fix it.

Face it, America, we are not being very smart about our credit. We are paying billions in penalty fees. We are spending more money than we make. We don’t even know our own interest rates or credit scores. And the country as a whole is almost a trillion dollars in credit card debt. So how do we fix it? For starters, it is time to start monitoring our credit for mistakes, to make sure we aren’t paying higher interest rates for no reason. We need to start looking for credit cards with lower APRs and penalties, such as most balance transfer credit cards that offer an introductory period of zero percent APR, so we can start paying off that trillion dollars. And we need to stop using our credit cards as extra income that we don’t have and start using them as tool that works hand and hand with our income. Check out the graphic below to see what mistakes you might be making with your credit and how you can go about fixing those mistakes.