Stupid, evil credit cards 1
21 March 2008 Jeff Gill
It starts with a little bit of overspending on Christmas. Not much. Not nearly as much as last year. Then it doesn’t all get paid off in January. Then you buy a couple things online and ‘we’ll pay off the card straight away.’ but you don’t and then the car needs fixed and we didn’t plan for that and a couple times you need petrol but you aren’t sure how much is in the current account because your record keeping hasn’t been so great so it goes on the card too and before you know it there’s your credit card with £700 on it. Dang.
It’s not a crisis. It will get paid off, but it didn’t have to happen. The thing is, you know it will happen again. WELL, NOT TO US. Our credit cards have now been put in a Very Inconvenient Place – we do have some self-control – and that is where they are staying.
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tags: accounting,
debt,
money
Things being said about Stupid, evil credit cards 1
On 24 March 2008 Dave wrote:
Don’t hide them, cut them up! Unless someone has the cash to pay a card off in full at the end of every month, then they are a very bad thing….
On 24 March 2008 Jeff Gill wrote:
Dave, that is very good advice. If you can’t pay it off, don’t use it. And people who compulsively and persistently spend beyond their means should definitely destroy their cards.
In our case it was more of a matter of it’s-there-and-I-can’t-be-bothered-to-check-the-balance-in-the-checking-account-so-I’ll-use-the-credit-card. Our other credit card has been sitting in the same Very Inconvenient Place for over a year, and I’ve never considered pulling it out and using it.
On 24 March 2008 Paul wrote:
mine is still conveniently located in my wallet but we’ve always paid off the balance – apart from one month where we had a mini credit crunch and even then we paid off a large chunk of it.
I know what you meant tho – often the petrol and the last shopping of the month go on the card…