Mistake No. 21: Spending more with your credit cards
Many people don’t realize that when they’re using credit cards, there’s a good chance that they’re spending more money than they would if they paid with cash. Credit cards tend to make many people spend more, probably because swiping a piece of plastic through a machine doesn’t feel as financially meaningful as handing over some hard-earned paper currency.
A Dun& Bradstreet study, for example, found that people spent 12% to 18% more when using charge cards than when paying in cash. And McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) at onetime reportedly observed customer tickets rising from an average of $4.50 to $7.00 when they used plastic instead of cash.