Explain
Credit card interest in terms of a gym membership you forgot to cancel
Credit card interest is essentially a gym membership for your debt that you signed up for during a manic phase in 2014 and have since forgotten how to cancel.
Every month you fail to clear your balance, the bank treats your debt like a personal trainer who takes a percentage of your salary just to stand near you while you suffer. The minimum payment is the equivalent of paying fifty quid to walk into the gym, sniff a damp towel for ten seconds, and leave immediately without touching a single weight. The interest rate is the creeping realisation that your debt has joined a cross-fit class, and it is now demanding you pay for its protein shakes, its specialised knee sleeves, and its inevitable, loud arrival at your front door at 6am to scream about compounding growth.
If you carry the balance over, you are basically subsidising a bank's state of the art sauna while you are left shivering in the car park with nothing to show for it but a mounting sense of inadequacy. Eventually, the interest on your interest becomes a loyalty programme where the only reward is a permanent seat on the naughty step of financial viability. It is a subscription service for misery that refuses to let you unsubscribe via the app, despite the fact you have not used the treadmill of retail therapy since the last time you bought a fancy blender you swore you would use every single morning.
Where the analogy breaks downthe gym will eventually let you cancel if you complain loudly enough on social media, whereas the bank will happily keep charging you interest until the sun explodes.