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Sample Persuasive Speech

Better Essays

Credit Card Debt

ATTENTION GAINER:

I am going to need some audience participation. Everyone take a $5, $10, or $20 dollar bill out. How many of you are willing to rip your money up? You probably wouldn’t do it and think this is crazy, but we throw money away like this in the name of our car, television, or shoes every month. Let me give you an example.

SIGNIFICANCE (ATLEAST 1 SOURCE):

Let’s say you owe $1000 on your credit card and you have a minimum payment due of $25 and you are being charged 19% interest. How long do you think it would take you to pay it off by just making the minimum payments? The answer is 7 years according to the February 2005 issue of University Wire. And for the first year you …show more content…

Although the banks never checked to see if he would be able to pay his debts they still offered him more and more money. Once his limits grew he was able to spend more, which caused his payments to increase as well. Why did he have so many credit cards? Well, what he was doing was taking out new cards in order to pay off others. As time when on, he started receiving numerous letters and telephone calls threatening legal action. Unfortunately he didn’t see a way out of this out of control debt and decided to end his life as evidenced by the February 2005 issue of Daily Mail.

TRANSITION:

Now that you have a better understanding of the risky business of owning credit cards, let us examine who is to blame?

CAUSE (ATLEAST 2 SOURCES):

First, we must blame ourselves for letting this debt build up. It’s so easy to just say “charge it” and deal with the money later. It’s so much more convenient to use a credit card then using our cash. In the April 2005 issue of University Wire, Dr. James Roberts conducted a study about the spending habits of students around the country. He found that students who used credit cards to pay for their books weren’t able to tell within $30, $40, or even $50 dollars of how much they spent compared to the students who used cash and were able to tell within a few dollars how much they

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