With the ongoing mortgage crisis still unfolding, a lot of homeowners have had to go to great lengths to keep on track with their mortgage – even using their credit cards to make mortgage payments! While credit cards can be a great thing to have in case of emergencies, they have a lot of harmful side effects and it can be argued that they are bad for society as a whole. Once it was the norm to pay with cash. If you couldn't afford something, you simply didn’t buy it. The current credit crunch has led to a lot of financial institutions, even the largest among them to borrow from the Federal Reserve to remain solvent. Here are some figures from the Federal Reserve which may surprise you: In the years 2006-2007, US consumer debt was $2.46 trillion! Most of this is credit card debt. Other sources tell us that a little over 8% of U.S. households are carrying more than $9,000 in credit card debt. The biggest problem with credit cards is how easy it is to get one. Millions of appli...