The Writer’s Coin

I was reading this post over on The Tao of Making Money and most of the comments are all about how evil credit cards are because they allow people to get into crazy amounts of debt and then the credit-card companies hit us with crazy fines and interest rates, essentially getting rich off our misery.

Except, that’s not quite true. They are getting rich off of consumer’s irresponsibility and inability to say “no” to buying something they can’t afford.

This is our own fault people, lets please not try to pin it on someone else. I use my credit card for everything and it works because I have restraint. Granted, some people don’t, which is fine, but they realize it so they budget in a different way (like the cash envelope system). It’s just the pinnacle of irresponsibility to say “The credit-card company made me do it.”

YOU DID IT.

Some people get into crazy debt by using their credit cards, paying thousands of dollars for unnecessary items that should’ve only cost hundreds. Here is what I get for using my credit card so much:

- Automatic itemization on all my purchases and an end-of-year statement detailing where I spent all my money.

- $250–$350 in cash rewards per year, depending on how much I spent (it’s 1% cash back)

- All kinds of insurance (travel, luggage, etc.) that I don’t even know about.

- The occasional special deal that only certain card members have access to

- No worries in terms of cash or losing my card since they will send a new one the next day and none of the purchases will be charged to me. They take good care of me.

So one man’s evil is another man’s (insert cheesy analogy ending here). I could try to convince those credit-card haters to come over to the dark side but they are so convinced about how bad they are it’s just not going to happen.

Yes, credit-card companies are out to get us, but only because we’re such easy targets.

Tags: Credit cards, rewards