all right well how do you use credit cards Carol
scarily very very very seldom
yeah
only in dire emergencies in fact i leave them home
uh-huh
is that from past experience bad experiences in the past or or just uh the fact that you don't want to be tempted
i have never
uh
i've used them but never to the extent of getting in debt like uh some people do
uh-huh
it's just that since my money is tight right now
i don't even give myself a tempting
uh-huh
because i've gotten them all paid off
yeah
so now i just wait
okay
before i use it
but um like i'll keep one minor one like Sears in my purse just for identification purposes
uh-huh
because i won't use it period
but like if you'd take a trip or something
if
i'll use bank uh Visa
yeah
yeah do you
but otherwise huh-uh
do you order a lot of things over the phone or credit card orders never
never
never
huh
so uh like if you go to uh K Wal-Mart or something you always pay in cash or with a check
um-hum cash check
cash
okay
very seldom do i even use cash
um so your money funnels directly into your checking account huh
um-hum
okay
how about you
me i have a Discover card and i use that
when when gas prices are the same whether you use cash or credit i usually use my Discover card and i can let my money sit in the bank for an extra
because they pay in our credit union pays at the end of the month on your balance so i will let it sit and then draw interest from that and then i'll pay my credit cards off in full every month
so you know i have no finance charges as long as i pay off exactly on time which i do
and also Discover card gives you a little bit of money back it's not much but you know five or six bucks uh instead of writing a check for a large purchase if i'm disciplined enough i can
uh like well uh like buying a suit if i spend like three hundred bucks you know i'll get some of that back through the
cash back program and also at the end of the month you know i'll get my interest on that three hundred bucks that was sitting in my checking account that would be gone had i written a check
and i do that sometimes but like when we go to the like uh i'd say it's about fifty fifty writing a check or using the Discover card
it just i don't know for some reason it just depend if it's something small i don't want to write a uh use my credit card but that's the only one i have and and sometimes we order things through the mail like books and uh
which is i just if they have a toll free number i'll call it up and you know charge it to my credit card as as long as
you know i'd make myself pay on time every time so there's no finance charge and
it's really you know like you said some people go off half wild and spend uh they think because they've got a thousand dollar limit then you know they've got to get that limit every month or something and uh they end up paying
finance charges and they just and then they'll pay the minimum balance every month and then end up they may have got something on sale but all the interest you know they end up paying more than what they would have had they just paid cash for it
see that's exactly i didn't get in debt but what i did was one year oh i can't remember when five six must be eight nine years ago
when i paid my taxes i realized that i had ran up so much on my credit card that i was paying interest that was
ridiculous i mean sure it was the tax write-off but
uh-huh
there was no sense to it
yeah
i mean there was no sense at all to it i was paying more interest on that card than the card was worth as far as i could tell
yeah
so at that point there we just stepped right on you know just saving all the way in and i'll turn around like on my car i'll borrow
against my insurance which i pay five percent interest
and buy my car that way
huh
and that works
wow
so i don't have to worry about it but i use uh override at uh Texin Credit Union
so that i don't have to keep too much i keep enough balance in my checking account so i don't have to pay
you know a service charge
what you override
and then i yeah
what's that mean
if i write a check real large it'll go ahead and pull it out of my savings account
oh okay
so i don't have to you know worry about it one way of the other and i just keep that minimum balance in there
okay i see
so it just you know and i pretty much budget that way all the way around but as i said my money's tight
yeah is that a free service that override
right now
yeah
huh
there's no charge for it
huh
so i do it that way but i do as i said i keep the credit card in my purse for identification
yeah
when somebody wants identification one way or the other
it's
but usually i won't put anything on that card unless it's something i really unbelievably need otherwise i better have it somewhere else
right
because i'm like you i'm not going to have a balance on that thing because it's too easy
i know too many people that pay off that card well i've got this credit card well maybe i'd better use that one or something like that and i'm saying huh-uh not me
yeah
it's just it's just so easy when uh
okay i think a lot of it's psychological you hand a piece of plastic and all you do is sign your name at least either with cash or with a check you have to write out the amount
so you actually see how much you're spending
well it's like um the little piece of plastic for uh
to get your money out or the credit union all you have to do is put it in the machine one way or the other
uh-huh
and like i'll run down there like you know for vacation and things like that and i'll leave it in there in savings account till the last day
yeah
and then i'll put the card in and pull it out what i want
but i'll pull it out of savings because i don't keep any balance in the checking
uh-huh
but that's still that's easy enough as it is but i wouldn't use the machine to pay fifty cents or a dollar for it
oh yeah no kidding
i won't even go that far
i complain every time i i mean we've only had to do it twice since my wife and i've been married in nine months is use the machine that charges and it charges a buck and one time it was because the machine at TI was broken
and we had to have cash so we had no choice but to go to the other place and the other one wa s just this weekend when we just
we were leaving out of town and we had to you know just have some cash and so we used the automatic teller card but you know i'm very chintzy with my money i don't like to spend lose a dollar just because i use a machine or something it's
um
senseless
but i'm like you if there's something
really that i wanted
i'll write to them before i'll put the credit card call in though i won't put it on the card unless i really
i'll take write them letter uh check for it
yeah that's
because it wastes too much time
on the credit card and i'm kind of i'm leery about things going on my card because i've had
you know had to go back and return something and it took so long to get it off and that was years ago
yeah
so i'm having real good luck with a credit card
i mean it came off there's no problem but it just takes too much
scares me
yeah
and like Tom Thumb's got uh credit card now they used for groceries
really
yeah over here in in Plano
their own Tom Thumb card
uh-huh
and you can charge your groceries on it
that's funny
and uh you can either charge your groceries on it you have a choice or you can write a check and they okayed it that way
uh-huh
so you don't have to keep going and get it you know credit check and things like that and they'll give you an extra twenty five dollars no charge or anything else like that but i won't even put that on the groceries
huh
because hey what happens if the clerk marks in an extra number or something like that and i don't check it
yeah yeah
no thank you i don't want anything going on my card you know in my checking account unless it's i know about it
right
but do you like Discover card i hadn't heard too much about it
yeah it seems a lot more places are taking it now which when i first got it it was a problem with it i i said i don't want to use the credit card and i just carried it with me like you said for identification and sometimes when i would take it go on a trip you know it
it was good to have a credit card because like if my car breaks down or something a lot of states don't because i travel from Indiana to Texas and a lot of states won't take out of state checks like you know just some gas station out of the way
um-hum
they want cash or a major card so i went ahead and got that and there's no fee no service fee for it
plus they play pay you cash back at the end of the i think i earned probably eight or nine bucks last year which isn't very much but i'd just started to use it and
and like i i had some major purchases i just was dumb and forgot to put on there like uh i wrote a check for my wife's wedding ring which was a lot of money and if i would have put it on the Discover card
the money you know could have sat in the savings account or the checking account for an extra month and it also would have paid me probably you know eight or nine bucks back
on uh the end of the year thing so i messed that up so i you know i'm still not in it's not a good habit to use it but fortunately i'm not uh
like some people not a spendthrift and i really have to think about my purchases and i know if i have money in the checking account to cover it
then i i'll use the Discover card you know to get a little more interest
but uh
yeah i i'm just very
