Credit cards can be as hazardous to your financial health as cigarettes are to your lungs, says Richard Baughman, and credit card companies will lure you in and keep you hooked more effectively than Joe Camel. During nearly thirty years as a loan officer at a number of Canadian banks and trust companies, Richard Baughman handled over 50,000 credit applications, and he learned that most people put less thought into shopping for a loan than they do into shopping for shoes! Naively believing that customer loyalty carries weight with the banks, or that credit reports are clean just because payments are on time, can set you up to be one of the millions of Canadians who will retire into poverty.