Argumentative Essay
This morning at breakfast Mom and Dad had their weekly argument about paying off the credit cards. My Mom wants to pay off the credit cards before buying anything else or doing anything else with the family income. My Dad wants to put money in a savings account in case of an emergency before starting to pay off the credit cards. My Mom ‘claims’ that the interest is so high on the credit cards that we will be giving money away if we keep making payments instead of paying them off. She says that credit card companies play tricks on their customers so we may end up paying forever.
In the long term my Mom said we would have more money to spend if there was no money to pay off on the credit cards. What she used to convince Dad was information from an article she read on a web site called The Motley Fool. She said it is very important to pay more than the minimum payment with each regular payment. If we only pay the minimum payment more interest has to be paid and it takes longer to pay the off the credit card. Paying so much interest is just a waste of money. She said we should use savings to pay off the credit card debt and after that we should stop using credit cards. Most people when they pay off their credit cards, find out it is like earning an 18 percent return.
Claim Paying off the credit cards should be the priority of the family budget. Grounds So the family will have more money.
Warrant Paying more than the minimum payment helps people pay off credit cards faster. Support A minimum payment only accounts for about 2 to 3 percent of the total credit card debt, each month more interest is added into the overall debt so only paying the minimum payment will mean more interest keeps being added and it will take longer to pay off. Qualifier Most people find they get an 18 percent return by not having any more credit card debt.
Rebuttal If there is an emergency and we need our savings we can use a credit card if we cannot come up with a better way like asking for help from our family.
Works Cited
Motley Fool Staff. (n.d.) 9 Ways to Pay Off Debt. Blog Post. Fool.com. Retrieved from http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/credit/9-ways-to-pay-off-debt.aspx
Toulmin, S. The Uses of Argument, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press 1969. (Summary retrieved from http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/making_argument/toulmin.htm)
