Giving credit a run for the money
Lori Borgman | Monday, April 27, 2009
I went green (as in greenbacks) last month. I
put away the credit cards, operated on a cash-only basis and hung
out with the guys – Washington, Lincoln and Jackson.
With the current economic turmoil, it seemed like
a good time to estimate how much I spend running the house and see
how far off I was.
Sure, you can track what you spend with a credit
card, but it’s not real time. By the time you’re going over your
charges a month after you made them, you have no idea why a sane
person would go to Wal-Mart 9 times in one billing period.
Besides, plastic isn’t real money.
Just like the politicians working with numbers
on paper aren’t spending real money. If they carted those billions
in bundled bills by wheelbarrows from D.C. to every corporation
getting a bailout, we wouldn’t have a president asking Congress
to cut the equivalent of a latte from next year’s budget.
We wouldn’t have a Congress. They would have been
run out of town several hundred billion dollars ago.
I loosely estimated what I spend on groceries,
clothes and assorted household items in a month and made a cash
withdrawal at the bank.
I was out of funds by the 10th.
Being that I had already proven myself right –
that I underestimate what I spend on a daily basis with credit cards
– I rewarded myself with a another trip to the bank for more cash.
When that was gone, it was no money – no shop-ey.
Here are the differences between paying with plastic
and paying with cash:
First and foremost -- it hurts.
Secondly, you develop hostile feelings toward
mundane purchases like glass cleaner, baking soda and grass seed.
When you spend cash, you’re more inclined to dig
around for something you thought you saw in the garage five years
ago than to rush out and buy a new one.
Lingering desires to continue swiping credit cards
is so intense you are tempted to swipe your driver’s license at
the grocery store checkout for old time’s sake.
When you see cash literally slipping through your
hands, you take better care of what you already have.
You realize that a $3 greeting card is a total
waste of money and hit the 99-cent display.
When you shop with a credit card, you ask yourself,
“When is that screen going to pop up so I can scribble my name?”
When you shop with cash, you ask yourself, “Is this really necessary?”
When you spend cash, you plan meals more carefully
and treat your leftovers with respect. The words “let’s eat out”
do not roll off your tongue.
Impulse buying plummets to almost zero.
When you near the end of your allotted dollars,
you spend slowly and thoughtfully and promise yourself not to take
it out on the husband, small children and furry animals.
When you spend cash, the best part of the month
isn’t when you load your wallet -- it’s when you open the credit
card bill.
