Want to avoid credit card debt? Avoid credit cards

I’m not one of those guys who will tell you to cut up all your credit cards.

But if it’s the only way you can keep from revolving debt each month, then do it.

Credit is out of control. The word has lost meaning. It’s a stand-in word for debt, with softer overtones, as in: You don’t have debt, you’re just learning to manage credit. How nice.

A recent New York Federal Reserve study concluded that payday loan stores are not really so bad because they provide credit to a strata of consumers — basically poor people — who otherwise can’t get it.

That’s true, in a warped way. Payday loans, with 390 percent annualized interest rates, do give desperate people a handy option to go even deeper into debt. But I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

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