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Credit Cards Re-Imagined: Could Credit Cards Actually Promote Financial Wellness

York, Joseph (2020) Credit Cards Re-Imagined: Could Credit Cards Actually Promote Financial Wellness. [MRP]

Item Type: MRP
Creators: York, Joseph
Abstract:

What parts of modern American life aren’t influenced by money? It mediates the relationship between individuals and nearly every domain - to nature, health, education, art, social justice, religion. It is nearly inescapable within the context of everyday life.

Given its ubiquity, money is naturally complex. At its best, it can serve as a tool in the pursuit of life’s greatest satisfactions. At its worst, it becomes a preoccupation that serves as an impediment to those same dreams.

Credit cards amplify the stakes further. The right loan can enable a business or individual to climb to previously unimaginable heights. If mismanaged, over-borrowing can lead to crippling debt.

The negative dimensions of modern financial life can be hard for individuals - especially members of the middle class - to articulate. Experienced first-hand, they seem abstract and hazy. People feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction, unable to attribute it to specific
causes.

This paper explores the financial haze many Americans find themselves caught in. Based on a comprehensive review of secondary sources and a new body of primary research, the author argues that the haze is a result of a swirl of forces so large, they become difficult to contemplate. They operate at the level of economic, societal, and
technological systems – with ripple effects that influence individual psychology.

It takes a holistic evaluation of the forces at play to plot an alternate course out of the money haze. A more holistic understanding illuminates a pathway from hazy unconsciousness to individual financial empowerment. Using credit cards as a representation of the system’s most complex paradoxes, the author proposes a reimagining – one that challenges some of the most basic assumptions that underlie a broken system.

Date: 11 May 2020
Uncontrolled Keywords: Credit cards, lending, borrowing, financial wellness, money, money coaches, consumer, debt, financial inclusion, philosophy of money
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Inclusive Design
Date Deposited: 12 May 2020 13:17
Last Modified: 20 Dec 2021 21:15
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/3009

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