You know, I have a lot of CC debt. Honestly, I know it wasn't the right thing to do to keep maxing them out and opening new ones (and, yes, the still kept giving them to me) - but for years I kept up the minimum payments - as long as I still could use the cards it all worked out. When things started crashing last fall and most of my cards shut me down at whatever the current balance was I started to pay a bit more attention to just how much of that monthly payment actually went toward the debt. Not much.