the part that sucks

Hmm... a little while ago I made the resolution to use my credit card more often. Sounds nuts, right? Most people need to watch their spending when it comes to plastic. Not me. See my problem is this - I'm addicted to paying up front. I dislike the feeling of owing money when I use credit.

No - it's not logical. So long as I don't carry a balance, I shouldn't worry about it. A general rule in finance is that the longer you can delay payment without penalty of interest, the better off you are because your money is worth more.

I noticed a while back (a few years actually) that I was getting services charges at my bank for using cash-debit too often. My service-plan comes with 10 free transactions (or something like that). That's any time money comes in or out of the account - except for my direct deposit salary.

So after my car insurance, my rent, and a couple of bills, I'm actually down to being able to use my debit card something like 6 or 7 times a month. Invariably, I'll wind up with a few bucks to pay because I'll likely make something like 20 purchases per month - plus withdrawing actual paper money from bank machines.

The idea behind my experiment was simple: put as much crap on my credit card as possible in a month. Groceries, gassing up, my trips to the comics shop, eating out... I should be able to consolidate all those individual transactions into a single payment at the end of the month and avoid exceeding my transaction limit.

What I didn't count on: I never actually realized how much I spent on non-essentials. My bills arrived today... removing my groceries and gas money, my credit-card bill was still rather stunning... I spent somewhere on the order of 500 bucks on non-essential "living" expenses. Granted, one of those was that Oakley watch I bought through eBay. But still. I never realized.

On other flip side of this revelation - it dawned on me that I'm actually doing fairly well of myself earning a living. Point of fact: my parents would surely have a cow if they knew how much I spent on all the crap I write about in this blog. ^_^;;