What Scares You the Most About Halloween — and Credit Cards?

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By Paul Ausick Updated Published
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Halloween is not one of the holidays that Americans spend a lot of cash on. On average this year, people plan to spend $50 or less to celebrate the spookiest day of the year.

Consumer finance website WalletHub asked more than 500 Americans not only what they planned to spend this year, but also what are the things about Halloween that scare them the most and what are their biggest financial fears. Not a usual pairing, but interesting.

The scariest parts of Halloween, according to survey respondents, was having strangers ringing your doorbell (34%), spending money (31%), movies (30%) and costumes (5%). On average Americans will spend on 44% of their Halloween budget on candy, 25% on food and alcohol, 18% on costumes and 10% on decorations.

And what were people’s biggest financial fears? Unplanned emergencies and insufficient savings for retirement topped the list (26% each), followed by job loss (20%), fraud (11%) and poor credit (7%). In fact, 72% said they feared data breaches revealing their personal information far more than they feared spiders (28%).

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WalletHub also asked respondents to name the scariest thing about credit cards? Fraud (33%) and interest rates (31%) topped that list, while overspending (19%), losing the card (11%) and fine print (5%) also raised fears. A third say they use their credit cards too much and 81% said that not having a credit card was scarier than having one.

In that vein, WalletHub lists the worst (scariest) credit cards available in seven categories and offers six tips to help consumers avoid those cards. Visit WalletHub’s website for all the details.

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Photo of Paul Ausick
About the Author Paul Ausick →

Paul Ausick has been writing for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.

He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.

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