“Plastic Crack.”
Credit cards are a tool, and just like tools used correctly, they can be a benefit when they are needed. They can also do serious harm when they are abused or used incorrectly. I know, because I did use them incorrectly and I did abuse them. The serious harm I suffered was of my own doing.
So, if you abuse them, how do you get past it?
The crack analogy was somewhat intentional. Those who abuse any substance and are trying to quit cannot spend their time surrounded by the substance. You don’t go to the bar if you are an alcoholic, and you don’t go out on smoke breaks with others when you are trying to quit smoking. Yet, how many people wish they could get out of credit card debt but carry them around in their pocket every single day? I paid enormous bills and interest every month, and still I carried them all in my wallet religiously. Looking back, it was lunacy. I was addicted and hurting, and yet I was inflicting myself every day with this torture of putting my addiction right in my wallet!
Here is what I did:
When the next credit card statement came, I opened it and laid it out in front of me neatly. I wrote the amount I had charged that month on a piece of paper in big black marker. Then I went line by line, and for each charge I attempted to retrieve the item I purchased and put it in a stack on the floor. There were 3-4 DVD’s, a sweater, a toy for our daughter, and some office supplies.
I marked off the tangible goods I could produce. For all non-tangible goods, I wrote index cards with subject headers on them: Gas, Groceries, Entertainment, Eating Out - that covered most all the intangibles. I laid those in front of my pile, and propped my total spent sign in front of it all, and looked at it in dismay.
Nearly $700.
All I could produce at the end of the month after spending $700 (seven hundred dollars!) were some DVD’s, a sweater, a toy, and office supplies. The rest were consumables. Meals I didn’t remember, groceries long since eaten, gas burned, and entertainment that at this point didn’t seem very fun. And I certainly didn’t have $700 left over at the end of the month to pay it all off, much less the balance already on the card.
Just like anything else - if you want to break a bad habit, you’ve got to eliminate your exposure. Leave the cards at home, freeze them up in ice, lock them away, or cut ‘em up!
If none of those work, try producing everything you used credit cards to buy at the end of the month. It took me making my pain visual to get me past the plastic addiction.
