I am married to Mr. Finance who does not believe in debt. At all. Before we got married I believed a little debt was part of the American way of life. Who didn’t have a balance on their credit card?
Wayne didn’t. Never has, never will. Yet, he had a credit card.
“But how come you don’t have any debt? What about the things you want? You’ve got all that credit and could buy so much.”
“Credit isn’t money, Courtney. If I want something I make sure I have the cash in hand first. I might use my credit card to buy whatever so my money can earn interest a little longer, but I pay off my bill when it comes.”
What? That made no sense to me. He had a perfectly good credit card with a high balance just waiting to be used and he wasn’t using it to get anything –except things he already had money for. Why?
Sure, it sounded nice to not have any debt but it didn’t seem practical. I only made so much money and I needed X amount of things –which usually cost more than the wages I was bringing in. The only way to afford them was to charge it to my credit card.
“That’s your first problem,” Wayne explained. “You don’t understand the difference between needs and wants.”
“Sure I do. Take that dress I just bought. I needed it for work.”
“Needed or wanted? You have a closet full of good clothes. You didn’t need to add anything to your wardrobe. You wanted that dress. You need to have a working car and a way to fix it when it breaks down.”
Which, at that time, it did often and he was the one to always bail me out. Usually because my credit card didn’t have room to charge anything more sizeable than $20 here or $30 there.
You see, I was a Maxer Outer. At that time I had a $500 limit. Every time I got down to $460 or so I’d reward myself with a shopping spree and max myself out again.
That’s the other thing we’d fight about: the interest. On some level I understood I was paying it, but I didn’t understand that it kept accumulating and actually increased my credit card balance. Again, it was how things worked so I was going with the flow.
“Sit down and let me show you the math of all that interest you’re paying on your balance.”
Why he didn’t start out with that approach to begin with, I don’t know. Or maybe he had and it just happened that it clicked that time.
Whatever it was, I made an effort to pay more than my minimum monthly due. Once I got it paid off, I never maxed it out again and I’ve never carried a balance since.
Yet, I haven’t shunned credit cards. In fact, I use them all the time for everything. But these days I make them earn for me. I’ll be writing about all that in upcoming articles.
Courtney Mroch also writes in Pets and Marriage. For a full listing of her articles click here.
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