On Monday afternoon I did something I have not done in more than a decade: I applied for a new credit card.
My relationship with credit is very similar to my relationship with organized religion, political parties and certain members of my family: whenever possible, I avoid. I rebelled against my parents in many ways, but when it came to what we were taught about money – don’t spend what you don’t have – I was the best little boy in the world, and I still am. I am lucky that I can support myself, and for that I am grateful. At the same time, I don’t own the latest and greatest of everything, and believe it or not I do not consider myself deprived. I use the credit card to pay my monthly Netflix fee (it’s like a credit laxative – it keeps the account running) and for airline tickets or anything else I have to buy via the Internet, which is almost nothing. I pay it when the statement arrives, which, by the way, is almost always two weeks after the date on the statement and, therefore, two weeks closer to the due date, after which they can throw late fees my way. For some reason, the envelopes my credit card statements arrive in are not postmarked, so I have no idea when they’re mailed, nor can I prove anything. Does it take 14 days for an envelope mailed in Phoenix to be delivered in Portland? Perhaps. Or perhaps there is a regulation – a long one, spelled out over the course of several pages, in tiny print – that legally grants the credit card company a certain number of days between printing the statement and mailing it. Nothing would surprise me, really.
You wouldn’t have to know me for more than five minutes to know that I consider the credit card companies, the bankers, all the money people in general to be common criminals. They take as much as they can get, and we give readily. And we get up on our hind legs about people looting after natural disasters? Come on. Anyhow, up until recently, my attitude about the credit card was this. I have a backup, a Plan B in the form of several thousand dollars should I ever need it. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to pay an annual fee for that.
Reasonable, that is, until my tax dollars were diverted in order to help the big financial companies out of the pit into which they damn near hurled the entire country, if not the entire world. It’s for the good of us all, we were told. Things would be so much worse if these companies failed. Really? I’ve never seen proof of that. Have you? What would keep a company such as the Bank of America or Goldman Sachs from exaggerating a little about their significance to the stability of the economy in order to scare people into submission? They’re not exactly famous for honesty, in my opinion.
When the record-breaking bonuses were announced, my head exploded. And when I learned about “inactivity fees” my head exploded again. Someday, when I have nothing better to do, I am going to send some invoices to a couple of my clients who I haven’t done any projects for in a few months, just $100 or so, just to let them know I’m alive and well, and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.
My new credit card, which I picked up yesterday, is issued through my credit union – which is right here, in Portland, and is overseen by a board of directors who are employed by companies whose offices are at most two bus rides from my house. My new card does not have an annual fee, and the interest rate on it is 9 percent. There is no fee for not using it. The amount of credit available to me, should I need it, is $5,000 less than the amount on my previous card, and I did lose a few points on my credit score, which I plan to earn back – that sounds like I was out skipping school or something, doesn’t it? – within a year or two by paying what I owe on a regular, timely basis. My new credit card has a very nice image of Mt. Hood on it, and when I signed my name on the back of it with a Sharpie marker and told the woman who helped me that it would certainly smear almost immediately, she pulled out a roll of clear tape, tore off a strip and covered my signature. “There,” she said.
So tomorrow I am going to call Bank of America and cancel my card. I would have done it yesterday or this morning, but I when I write out my to-do list for the week, I like to save the fun things for Friday.
