probably uh the lifestyles and the size of the area we live in and an age can make a very difference in how credit cards are used um
at this point in life i do not carry a credit card that i have to pay a service charge on
uh-huh none at all huh
right uh we used to have American Express and uh
Visa that of course there's a yearly fee on
i see yeah has it
and we got rid of those we now have Discover we have a Visa that does not have a yearly fee and then
we have a card that our bank put out on a promotion this year that uh of the first year there is no yearly fee and of course we don't plan on keeping it the second year
uh-huh
uh-huh
yeah that
because i'm pretty frugal about things like that
that's what we we got rid of an American Express card for the same reason is though we have a a credit union and we get our cards our other MasterCards for free so we don't have to pay a a fee at all
uh-huh
and that's what i i know people who don't have any credit cards at all and i'm always amazed because i don't know how they can get by without them it doesn't seem like you can do anything anymore without a credit card
we find it especially useful because my husband retired over a year ago and we travel quite a bit and we we like to leave a credit card when we check into a motel in case we want to make a phone call or
uh-huh
whatever which we do pretty often and and uh fact in a lot of motels we noticed from our most recent trip they that you do not even get the telephone turned on in your room unless you've left a credit card at the desk
uh-huh
uh-huh
so i suppose for that reason we will always have a credit card of some kind but
yeah i like them too with with us we've got insurance of course but due to my husband's work but by the time like two weeks ago we all got sick all four us and one kid had to go to the doctor twice
and then all the other the the rest of us did and he was like six hundred dollars yeah and it was we were we all had it was a viral pneumonia it was really bad and and we were just horribly sick but i mean six hundred dollars i can't come up with
oh my
uh-huh
can you do that on a credit card
yeah all the doctors here will take a Visa so that and you know and go to KMart and use the pharmacy to pay for the uh medicines and then turn it all into the insurance company and wait for it to come back
oh for heaven sakes
for the drugs yeah
uh-huh
you know and so our part of it was still twenty percent but twenty percent i can payoff in one month whereas you know then i got to wait for the rest the rest of it to come back from Aetna but it basically floats
uh-huh
you know during the the time because we've got a thirty day grace period on the credit card as long as you pay it you know within that time and that's usually enough time for the insurance to get back
oh uh-huh
uh-huh
i try to make that our biggest use of credit cards i know people who are so in debt people who have five Visa cards i can't believe you know it's like why did you go get they charged up one so then they but they were still paying their minimum so their credit rating was still good
uh yes
uh-huh
uh-huh uh-huh
and and you would you know they get this in the mail say oh well we can't use that one anymore we'll just get another one and that's like who you
i have a girlfriend who has one that her husband doesn't know she has now uh she must rent a p post office box or something or i mean she couldn't beat him to the mail every month i wouldn't think
oh
yeah
because they both work and they uh he's a fireman so he's home two days a week that she teaches and would not be there so i don't know how she manages it but she keeps that a secret and i would not want to pay her monthly
uh-huh
interest rate on the thing it just has to be awful because it
oh yeah
but that's
that's a good way to make a big problem in your marriage real quick gosh that's just dishonest
oh oh i would think so but they've been married almost thirty five years so i think they've done things like that to each other for a long time
oh well maybe maybe they'll be all right i know in mine if i did something like that and then my husband found out jeez he would just
be well i i think i would feel the same way i'd i'd really feel like i'd been deceived you know that that wasn't the thing to do
uh-huh
yes yes
well many many many many years ago uh i bought wallpaper we have a large kitchen
uh dining kitchen family room combination and i wanted to paper it and i bought wallpaper from Sears catalog on my Sears card and at that time i was only able to pay about ten dollars a month
which meant i was taking about eight dollars a month off
uh-huh
the balance by the time they got their interest out of it and it took forever to pay it off and at that point i promised myself i would never pay interest on a credit card again so that's kind of been my motto
um
yeah we've tried to do that we've paid ours off you know all the way down to where we had everything down to zero and especially right before i i quit work two years ago to stay home with the kids
and right and before i left we had everything paid off we were in great shape we were putting money you know because we were both working we were finally putting money in
uh-huh
but we've gone back the other way to some extent because because just because there are times when you just can't pay it all
uh-huh uh-huh
because there are just too many bills
well as you say when you're taking children to the doctor and adults too it does make a difference our children are matured out of the home and uh our needs are much different than they were
yeah
uh-huh
uh when we were raising a family i think back then we just now we feel like we might could live without one but uh we have a Discover card and i have to laugh about the cash back do you have one of those
oh isn't that silly i i sent that one back because we had used it for a year and we had used a thousand dollars worth during the year and what we and and i think we got back fifty cents or something it was like please what is this this is and the interest on it was was eighteen or nineteen percent
did you
yeah yeah
oh
and our Visa card was we could get through our credit union was like fourteen percent so we just we sent it back we
yeah
we keep gas credit cards and we have Visa and then i have started my own business i have a photography business and i went ahead and got a separate Visa just for that photography business because there are things that i have to buy
yeah
and with my photography when i when i take things to the lab to get developed it's several hundred dollars at a time and i was using up all of our personal credit
uh-huh
with my photography business even though again it's paying off every month because i'm i'm putting everything
uh-huh
i'm i'm uh you know i'm getting the pictures and i'm taking them back to the people i already have their money but i wasn't depositing them until i gave them the pictures back
uh-huh
uh-huh
another practice i found i'm going to have to stop hot checks you wouldn't think for a for a twelve dollar school picture that uh that people would write a hot check but they do
oh
oh i see oh dear well
uh-huh
i think those are the same people who have their credit cards uh charged up to the max and that's just a way of life i guess
i guess
it's just you know and when i think about that lady this this particular lady who wrote me a check for twelve dollars and it bounced and i sent it through you know sent it through the check through the bank once and she incurred at least a fifteen dollar fee
uh-huh
uh-huh uh-huh
for a returned check so now she's already doubled the price of her check and i've s ent it through a second time because they said there's money in the account now
uh-huh
you know and and if it doesn't go through the second time that woman's out thirty bucks
for one twelve dollar check it's never quite made sense to me but then uh
for one twelve dollar check
when my husband was in business he had one customer who said that he had to use credit cards because he spent more than he made every month and he was perfectly serious about it
gosh
so i don't know why he you know didn't go ahead and project to the fact that eventually that was going to catch up with him but
yeah
he's going to have a debt going out the ear
uh-huh
i was very glad my husband retired and got away from that kind of thing so we've we have a little problem with our gas card we're uh we've always used a Mobile card because he was affiliated with Mobile Oil and uh
uh-huh
we it's very difficult to find their stations so i guess that's one reason why we use uh we've used Discover and Visa quite a bit for fuel even
uh uh-huh
yeah
well we have a lot of Mobile stations around here and i used to use that card almost exclusively but now they're charging the extra five cents to use your credit card and Texaco and Chevron and somebody else
is not anymore they'll take it you know at the cash price or you they'll now let you write a check if you have their card so you pay for it immediately instead of um you know putting it off for a month
uh-huh
i thought that was illegal
what's that writing a check for gas
no no no to uh put a surcharge on a credit card
of
well all of them down down here you had a cash price for gasoline and a credit card price
oh so what they're doing they're discounting for cash is the way they're because i think it is illegal to add a surcharge so
right that's that's supposedly
that's that they're looking at it differently it amounts to that you have to pay extra if you use your credit card but
uh-huh
right and and they've changed that now now stop it go play and leave me alone
yeah and so i'm using the other ones now because they're just as easy to get to and then they're nickel a gallon cheaper so
yeah
so what we're saying is that we use a credit card when it uh is convenient but if it's going to cost us money we don't though
yes
we try not to we're probably the only two people in the United States the bank the banks don't want to hear from us because they want those people who charge it up to ten thousand dollars uh and then get all yeah and then pay fifty dollars a month and it all goes to interest
probably
and leave us
uh-huh
oh i guess they must they must make a ton there's not too many places you can make eighteen percent interest on things anymore
that's right that's right
that's what we need see you and i need to get in the credit card business we need to start our own credit card if you can yeah because you sure can't get that interest anyway else gosh
i guess so that would be wonderful wouldn't it
huh-uh huh-uh not on those CD's we're trying to live on uh yeah
oh yeah ours are like seven percent we've got one and with with IRA stuff in it and uh
uh-huh
jeez you can't get any interest rates
yeah
my folks have just retired just in the last couple of months my dad has and uh they're trying to figure out you know what they're doing with stuff and my mom's in there cutting up the credit cards you know can't use these anymore and
um-hum
sure sure yeah well like i say the only reason we do in fact i when my husband and i were
