Credit card debt, the government and us

I'd never dreamed anything could be more shocking than looking at my credit card balance, but that was before I opened this month's statement. There, staring me in the face, was a message informing me that if I paid the minimum balance each month, it would take 31 years to pay off the credit card.

OK, the message wasn't staring; after all, it's just a message. But I swear I could hear it laughing.

Think about it. Thirty-one years. That's longer than it takes to pay off a mortgage, longer than most marriages last, and almost as long as Geraldo Rivera has been annoying us on TV, though it feels much longer.

At least after a mortgage is paid off you have a house and finally can stop boring the kids with the lame joke that you don't own the house, the bank does. But with a credit card?

What do you get after 30 years - a statement with a zero balance on it? Gee, I wonder who you could sell that to?

That wasn't the only good news the bank had for me. In an attempt to temper the shock, the credit card company went on to tell me that if I managed to pay off the total over the next 36 months rather than the rest of my life, I'd save $7,299 in interest. Yeah, and if I paid the whole thing off this month, I'd save that interest and much, much more, so don't you think I would if I could?

This homage to the Marquis de Sade - I mean, this important information - came courtesy of our federal government. The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, to be exact.

Congress passed this law last year, proving that the old line about one of the world's biggest lies - "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" - works much better as a joke than as reality. While there may be bigger lies - "I never read

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