Credit Canada

With three weeks until Christmas and 10 days until Hanukkah begins, 'tis the season for excessive spending.

Young people just want to shop till they drop. Old-fashioned thrift is in short supply in North America. Savings rates in Canada and the United States have been - 1% since 2005, a phenomenon known as "dissaving".

Among the more insidious ways lenders have devised to get consumers to spend more is the prepaid credit cards.

These look like ordinary credit cards but are preloaded with a certain amount of cash up front. There are no interest charges, so there's no way of spending more than the preloaded amount.