Are they certifiable? It's enough of a struggle should I choose to return to study, without wilfully overstretching in the hope of riding out the crunch.

It's now time for one of my credit cards to be changed over and I'm actually grateful for the tough love shown by the issuer in cutting off my old card before the new one gets here. I've actually had to think about what to put on plastic and paid for lots of stuff recently with real money rather than having it boomerang back.

I won't get rid of any cards in the crunch though, four is probably two more than I need but you don't know whether they will stop issuing cards as readily as before. Two of the cards are paperless if you spend nothing in a single billing period, so it's like they don't exist.