Expensive credit

[ewx]

Robert Jenkins had the credit limit on his Lloyds TSB platinum credit card raised from £6,000 to over £11,000 in under two years - on an annual salary of £18,000. His wife Evelyn was lent £4,500 on her Lloyds TSB platinum card on an annual salary of £5,500.

“was lent”? No element of “chose to borrow” at all?

Yes, offering to loan someone more money than they can sensibly afford (assuming that's what we're meant to conclude from the above numbers) is an irresponsible act. But so is accepting the offer. There's two parties to this decision and I don't see why all the blame is being attached to only one of them.

(My credit limit, on the same kind of card, started out at £4,500 and in fact hasn't changed since then; five or six years, I think. So it's clearly possible to have a credit card from the same bank without a ridiculously inflating limit.)

Comments

[gmh.livejournal.com]

An annoyance with my bank has run along similar lines; they keep increasing my overdraft limit, even though I have informed them that I want to eliminate my overdraft.

On two occasions, I've asked them to lower my limit. One one of those they didn't; on the other, they did so, then raised it again about 3 months later.

As these things go, my actual overdraft usage isn't that great. There's no way in Hell I need (or am going to use) a £5,000 overdraft limit; and given the fact that my fiscal self-discipline has been somewhat hard-won, I dislike the bank assuming that the lure of more spendable money is what I need.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

That's a mindbogglingly high overdraft limit. I assume that that's not a free overdraft?