So, I was looking for an article to blog about and I just had to pick this one. It asks the question, is the convience of using a credit card at fast food restaurants making America even more fat?
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/CreditCardSmarts/CreditCardsCanMakeYouFat.aspx
In consumer math we're discussing the "evils" of credit cards and how much they can mess up your finacial success. True, for big perchases credit cards are convient but if you don't pay them off you can end up paying more than whatever you "saved" by using your plastic. The article deals with the externality of credit card use at fast food restaurants. Using plastic instead of cash is convient (yes...I'm guilty of this) but it could be a lingering factor in the correlation between the easy of access to fattening food and the level of obesidy in America.
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3 comments:
See, to me this seems backwards. Fast food restaurants are where I go when I'm broke. McDonald's, for instance, where you can spend, like, two dollars and get food that's substantial enough to get me by. That's where I go when I scrounge up my eight or nine quarters.
If I had a credit card at my disposal, I'd go to nicer places, like somewhere with real food. (Salamone's is coming to mind right now... I love their pasta!) I don't ever feel bad about throwing away a few bucks at a fast food joint; it's when I spend more than twenty dollars on a meal that I'd rather ignore that purchase. Hence, the introduction of my credit card.
Usually people use credit cards when they don't want to think about the cost of something. I guess unless you're a McDonald's regular, I wouldn't suspect this trend, but I very well could be wrong. I didn't do the study, after all.
All I use is plastic.
I cracked out the cash one day and our favorite wearer of paisley ties geeked out.
but i guess the point is that perhaps this is true, but a lot of people just use the plastic. I mean, I put a water and a pack of gum on my debit card last week at the 'Ko. so i'm not sure if i believe this study because people use the plastic for everything.
but then vicky, I think the real question is, do you buy more than you would if you were using cash? Maybe you wouldn't have had any money on you and had to forgo the bottle of water and gum and hope that someone left something on the break room table. Sure, you may have been thirsty and your breath might have been a little smelly...but you would have not spent that extra money.
So, I think this is really asking, do we buy more of everything (including fast food) just because we have plastic?
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