Buying some perfume online.
"Would you like an installment plan?"
For a $26 purchase.
If I wanted I could set up the installment plan for the $26 purchase and have it charge my credit card.
Call it "micro leverage on leverage."
Some puritanical grumpy voice deep in me that came from my dad is grumbling that it ought to be illegal to buy something like perfume like this. But really it shouldn't be possible for any purchase. In some ways buying food this way would be a sadder story.
Every single day there are all these offers to go into debt flying at my face. I don't even notice them anymore. And I can see easily how they could take over your life.
The "offers" have a tone that makes it seem like a normal thing to do. I think we should cancel all of these debits for those who have them. Let the creditors fail and make the whole thing illegal.
It's what Jesus would have done. Flip over the table. Scatter their coins and contracts and chase them out of the temple.
I know in my core the only reason I don't have debt is because we had a little financial security growing up. And I haven't been hit by the natural and man made disasters that push people into this corner. Not about "financial planning" to the degree people think.
When I was younger, more broke over draft fees nearly ruined my life.
A $30 fee on a $4 purchase. I fought it. Yelled at them on the phone until they removed it. "Why would you think anyone would want this service?"
I was lucky in that my mother was very savvy as a household finance manager. (My dad was...rather less so. Which may be why my mom was so fierce about it.)
Every year, we got a gift certificate from Monkey Ward for keeping our bill paid up,* which she'd give to me, & point out the reason we got it.
I cam out of childhood regarding consumer debt roughly as dangerous as heroin. Haven't had reason to change that assessment.** >
* Yes, it was a different time. Nowadays, I've heard that entities that issue consumer credit classify people like me, who keeps my credit card paid off, as "deadbeats." Which is...ironic, to say the least.
** As it happens, I did have occasion to rack up a good chunk of debt (not counting the mortgage). Which is why I'm still working to pay my mortgage off.
Well, I mean, heroin also wrecks your health directly & deranges your motivation structure, so there's that. But it could be argued that consumer credit does the same. Just not quite so directly.
In any event, my Lazy Person's Trick for quitting unwanted habits also applies:
Never start.
This also makes easier to quit if circumstances force you to take up a problematic habit.
myrmepropagandist
Cavyherd
✧✦Catherine✦✧