I Forgot To Get Out The Candles

Christmas time is well and truly a distant memory (that is, unless you are still paying off the credit card balances you racked up!!!), but a significant milestone in 21st Century British life was celebrating its second anniversary around about then, and I must admit I forgot to get out the birthday candles. Doh!

At precisely 10:38am on 29 December 2004, Britons were logged as spending more with credit cards than with cash for the very first time in history. As reported in the newspapers the very next day, leading banks determined the exact moment a schoolteacher made her historic credit-card purchase somewhere in west London.

Less than 40 years after Britain’s first-ever credit card, each and every one of us has an average of 3.5 plastic cards in our wallets.