Going in debt a good thing, so they say

The Denver Post recently reported that fewer young people own credit cards. Instead of using plastic and potentially racking up debt as they've been taught and raised and encouraged to do they have been more financially responsible and reluctant to spend what they don't have. 

This isn't how things are done This isn't the American way, at least not in the last half-century. The next thing you know, if we're not careful, we'll have fiscal responsibility and solvency,Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. and then where will we be? 

Think of all the life experiences these young people are denying themselves monthly interest payments, the convenience of plastic, the years of carefree spending followed by years of anxiety and insomnia? 

Don't they want to spend today, for tomorrow we die? 

The Post reported that the number of college undergrads with credit cards under the age of 24 dropped from 49 percent to 39 percent last year. The average credit card balance for that group dropped from $2,500 in 2001 to $1,600 in 2010. 

Translation: This age group has fewer credit cards and less debt. 

Maybe you're a fiscal conservative and believe this should be considered 100 percent good news, but The Post in a sign-of-the-times moment reports that while it's true you young people are avoiding debt increasingly, there is a problem with this approach: They aren't building a good "credit history." Translation: If you have been living debt free, you're considered a poor risk for a loan to buy a house. 

Memo to young people: Yes, this is very confusing.Online shopping for solarpanelcells. At first,Find a great selection of customkeychain deals. it won't make sense to you, and then later, after it's been explained to you with graphs and a PowerPoint presentation and you've had years to accept this thing, it still won't make any sense whatsoever. 

See if you can follow this "logic": The people who track credit scores consider a person with a history of debt and repayment superior to a person who is responsible, has a good income and has little or no debt. Thus, the need for a credit card. In simple terms, you have to go into debt to show you can go into debt. In simpler terms, debt is good, debt is encouraged. 

We know it sounds nonsensical, but only because it is. It's like saying you have to rob a bank and serve a jail sentence so you can prove you're not a responsible criminal (don't do this this is still a bad idea). Or something like that. 

No one is certain how or what created the current system it's a complete mystery, like the Bermuda Triangle or airlines but, taking a wild guess here, we're pretty sure it was the credit card companies and banks, with help from Congress. No one is certain when or why this began; it's just always been that way, like the weather and cough due to cold. 

"Nobody fully understands it," says Steve Palmer, CEO of Premier Credit Consulting, a credit repair organization. "It's crazy. It doesn't seem to be logical. But it's vital for people to take credit. If you want to buy a home, you're going to have to have credit cards or some type of revolving debt." 

It's backward; it's upside down; it's counter-intuitive. Or, to put it in youthful terms, it's like totally messed up, like.Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. Shakespeare wrote, "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be." What did he know? He never lived in our world. 

One part of the campaign is a series of rolling deadlines, which extend through 2017, to further encourage the use of chip-based cards. Merchants will eventually also have to upgrade their devices, and banks will have to issue the chip-based cards. 

Tourists to the U.S. and other cardholders who carry such plastic will still be able to withdraw cash from U.S. ATMs. Consumers are unlikely to see higher costs in the near future, but ATM owners may choose to remove their machines from fraud-prone areas such as tourist destinations and border towns, said Sam Ditzion, chief executive of Tremont Capital Group, a Boston-based firm that tracks the industry. 

A Tremont analysis estimates that it will cost ATM owners more than $860 million to upgrade their machines for the chip cards. The chip card "ultimately makes sense for the United States, but rushing its implementation would be a mistake," Mr. Ditzion said. 

MasterCard is "extremely pleased at the commitment and the priority" of ATM operators, said Leland Englebardt, who oversees MasterCard's ATM business. He said that company is seeing "excellent progress" among ATM operators, noting that an operator who chooses not to make the switch is "making its own decision" to accept liability. 

MasterCard has set a more aggressive deadline for ATM transactions than Visa, which doesn't impose the liability shift until 2017. 

MasterCard's first big deadline comes at a time when ATM fraud is a rising concern, particularly a process known as card skimming. 

In skimming,Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host besticcard platforms. information is stolen from a card's magnetic stripe and then used to make a counterfeit card. Thieves can then take that card and withdraw cash. 

The debate over chip-enabled cards has been a chicken-and-egg issue in the U.S. for years. Many merchants say they don't want to invest in new technology to support the more secure payments if banks won't issue the cards. 

The banks, meanwhile, haven't converted their card portfolios because they say that other technology, such as mobile-device payments, may leapfrog the need for the chip-enabled plastic.