It is becoming more difficult to live without a credit card in this world. You need credit cards to make online payments since more and more companies are moving exclusively online. Brick and mortar stores are beginning to refuse cash transactions now. I suspect that this trend will continue.
While you can use the debit card provided at most banks in lieu of a credit card, this carries risks. If your card is cloned by a skimmer or in any way compromised, you can lose access to your entire bank balance while you get the situation sorted. I learned this the hard way when it happened to me several years ago.
Credit cards can provide a layer of protection from this but the protection comes at a cost for the unwary. Accept the wrong credit card offer and you will find yourself paying outrageous annual fees for the privilege. If you decide to go with a prepaid “credit card,” as in the ones you find at the corner gas station, their transaction fees can be prohibitive.
That said, if you would like to annoy the finance industry while you’re protecting your bank account, a credit card is a wonderful way to do that. All you need to do is pay your balance off in full each and every month before the due date.
You see, credit card companies make their money through annual fees and interest fees. The credit card companies who don’t charge an annual fee rely upon interest fees and late payment fees to make their money. If they can tempt you into carrying a balance every month, these people are very happy campers. In 2016 alone, credit card companies took $63.4 BILLION dollars out of our collective pockets, and they enjoyed hoarding every penny of it.
Just imagine the good that $63.4 BILLION could have done for the poor in our nation alone. That much money could have benefited the poor worldwide, if properly distributed. Yet Richard Fairbank, the CEO of Capital One, a popular credit card company, took home $17,328,902 in 2019. You can look that up. It’s listed in the SEC filing right here.
That one man, Richard Fairbank, is a prime example of how the rich are getting richer off the backs of the rest of us. We slave and we sweat and we struggle while him and people like him sit in cozy air-conditioned offices and laugh.
But there’s a way to strike back at him and the others in the credit card industry. We can use their money for free, and there’s not a thing they can do about it.
Credit card companies hate when people use their money for free. They even have a term for it. People who use the money from credit card companies for free are called “freeloaders” and “deadbeats” by the credit card industry.
It’s easy to do. In fact, I’ve been doing it to get back at them for about a year now.
All you have to do is take out a credit card at one of the no-annual-fee credit companies and pay off your balance in full each and every month. Do not make the minimum payment. They will do their level best to persuade you to make the minimum payment. Pay off the entire balance in full.
It kills the credit card companies when you do this. If you’re smart, you’ll take the money you intend to pay the credit card company off with and stick that money into an interest-bearing account so that you can make a bit of money off of their money each month.
The funny part of this is the fact that the credit card companies cannot penalize you if you do this. When you pay off your credit card balance in full each month, they are actually forced to reward you with a good report on your credit rating.
Please note that if you have trouble paying your bills and with credit in general, you may want to avoid this bit of revenge against the credit card companies. If you cannot resist the temptation to spend more than you can pay off, I urge you to avoid this act of rebellion like the plague. Credit card companies work extremely hard to persuade you to carry a balance for a reason, and they are so good at it that the CEO of Capital One made over $17 million due to their talent.
That said, I enjoy using their money immensely each month. When I work up my budget, I transfer the amount I intend to spend on my credit card into an interest-bearing savings account. By using their money instead of mine, I am able to earn a bit of interest at their expense. It’s not much, but it makes me laugh every time I do it.
This act of revenge allows me to take a bit of money out of the pockets of at least one monster every month. Even better, it allows me to make money at the expense of that very same monster. If you have an issue with the usurious rates and the hidden fees that credit card companies charge, you might want to stage your own little revenge.
How do you fight the monsters? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. I could use some ideas :).
It is hypocritical to run a website about buying and living on less while begging your readers to buy your crap so I refuse to do it. That said, I live on the money I receive from book sales, so if you can find it in your heart to pitch in I would be immensely grateful.
I’ve written a lot of books sharing my odd view of life in hopes of helping others. My most notorious book is titled The Shoestring Girl: How I Live on Practically Nothing and You Can Too, but The Minimalist Cleaning Method is pretty popular as well. You can find them at the following places:
Amazon
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Smashwords (non-DRM)
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