Over the past year more than 8 million consumers have eliminated their credit cards.
Only about 62 million people have an active credit card now compared with 70 million a year ago.
Some of the speculation is that people fell behind on their payments due to the recession and that the loss of the credit card was involuntary.
Another idea is that people are just getting smarter and not using credit so much.
And it is probably a little bit of both.
It is useful to point out though that if you eliminate a credit card, whether it is voluntary or involuntary, you credit score will go down because of the all-important debt to available credit ratio. If you have less available credit your score will plummet.
Even so, it may be worth it to eliminate credit cards?.
