Article content

There are more than 70 million credit cards in Canada. How many of them are attached to loyalty cards? We can only speculate.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or 'It's just stupid': Is the endless hunger for credit card points really worth piling on debt? Back to video





Canadians would never look a gift horse in the mouth but it turns out they might misplace it

Read more

[/np_storybar]

What we do know is that every month about 60 per cent of all the debt accumulated on those cards will not get paid and the users will end up dinged for interest charges in the range of 20 per cent on an annualized basis.

Yet, the endless hunger for points and rewards for everything from free flights to hotels to university tuition continues. It’s a pursuit that ignores the obvious — namely if you are paying interest on your credit card debt there is no points program in the world that will make your behaviour make sense.

“It’s just stupid,” says Laurie Campbell, executive director of Credit Canada, a debt counselling service. She’s a little tired of people obsessing over their point balances instead of credit card balances, hence the abrupt answer. “This is very prevalent I can tell you from the clients we see in here. It’s so sad.”