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> i'm sure there are some people are responsible enough to never incur a finance charge from a credit card by always paying their monthly balance. I've never actually met one of those people.

...until today!

Hi! I'm "magnetic" - nice to meet you!

It's not as uncommon as you think: many tools allow you to not miss payments nowadays, from email/SMS/push notification reminders to automatic payments.

If you have the money to afford what you buy on the CC, there is really no reason you should be paying any fees, unless you are sloppy with finances.

I believe you when you say you're hit with charges, but I also think you are the reason for it. Sorry! (nothing personal)

1 comments

Hi magnetic, nice to meet you! Out of curiosity, where would you say you developed your money management skills? Was it from your parents, from school, or just organically as you started taking on more responsibility as an adult?

To acknowledge your point, I was definitely the reason for the interest charges. As I mentioned in other comments in this thread: growing up my parents didn't teach me much in the way of handling money responsibly. It took me almost 10 years of being an adult before I realized that I wasn't managing my money, but it was managing me.

Before two years ago I never created a monthly budget and stuck to it. The typical month looked like me spending way too much money in the first half of the month. Which led me to constantly checking my account balance in the second half of the month. When my checking account would start to get below about $200 I would shift spending over to my credit card. Next month I usually tried to pay it off. Sometimes I didn't and even worse sometimes it would take me a few months.

Its exhausting when I look back at all of the financial drama I dealt with until recently. Mostly because I never planned how my money was going to be spent with a monthly budget, but also because I bought stuff that I didn't need and couldn't afford.

The point I was trying to make with my original comment was: More people are likely to carry a balance on their credit cards than those who pay it off on time every month. I'm fairly certain the bubble I grew up in skewed my perception that everyone carried a balance on their credit cards. I knew people who said they paid it off every month, but when I asked them to be 100% accurate with that statement, they always backpedaled. At least I know of one person "magnetic" who actually pays their bill on time every month.

> Hi magnetic, nice to meet you! Out of curiosity, where would you say you developed your money management skills? Was it from your parents, from school, or just organically as you started taking on more responsibility as an adult?

I am not so sure I know the answer to that, but I've had to "live on my own" at 16 as my parents were living abroad and I was living by myself in an apartment while going to high school. They'd give me a monthly "budget" and I had to manage the money to deal with life expenses. Perhaps this helped.

One thing I always strived for was to not purchase something unless I could afford it cash. I couldn't do it for my house so it was the only thing I really got a loan for, and even that I worked really hard to pay it off faster than the required schedule (which isn't necessarily a smart thing to do financially speaking, but it has a "peace of mind" value to me that is worth it).

The other thing that helped is that I'm not extravagant with purchases and - except for the times when I had a mortgage to worry about - my income would usually be high enough that I wouldn't have to go through mental gymnastics to figure out whether I should worry about the end of month.

So I developed a mechanical "pay the credit card in full at the end of the month" process, and that was it. The rest would go to savings, and once the savings had enough (a few months worth of living expenses), the overflow would go into more risky investments (like stocks, etc).

I don't like automated payment systems so I avoid anything that gives automated access to my money to a third party, but I do like reminders for bills, and most online banking systems will provide reminders to you in due time and let you pay your stuff online easily.

I also try to keep the amount of accounts to a minimum: I have very few credit cards and bank accounts. It simplifies the management of money.

Lastly, I am from Europe, and the credit card madness isn't something I was exposed to when I grew up, so when I came to the US I didn't feel like I needed a CC. It was hard to get one in the beginning anyways, since I didn't have any credit history.