Paying Interest is Theft
If someone stole $70 from you how would that make you feel? You would probably feel violated and angry. You would probably want to get back at that person and do what you can to make sure it did not happen again.
So why when the bank takes your money do you feel okay with it?
$70 is approximately the interest paid on a $3100 credit card balance at 26.49 percent, and that is where one of my credit cards sat before I paid it off the other day. Actually it was over $5k, $5514 to be exact and the interest was $121.
This should make anyone angry. The credit card companies are stealing hard-earned money from us every month and we are okay with them doing it. Of course, you can’t blame the banks, that is how they make money. You can and should be blaming the one person that caused this to happen. You.
I just finished reading Mr. Money Mustache’s Your Debt is an Emergency and now I feel more motivated than ever to pay it off. We should all be outraged that we are paying people because of the luxuries we can’t live without.
Being On the Same Page
Literally as I am writing this my wife came home from Target and told me she put the trip on her credit card instead of using our debit. This is the next card that we are paying off right now and will make the first major payment this Friday. She told me since I have been using every last penny to pay off our debt that she was not sure how much was in our savings account and rather than call me she made the decision in the check out line.
We had discussed how much she could spend and she somehow doubled that amount. None of it was really frivolous, but it was not budgeted and therefore the extra amount was not in my spreadsheet. It was okay since I allow for a bit of variation but I was angry that she used the card we are now paying off.
I immediately sat down with her and asked her to pay the amount on the receipt to her credit card so that it would not even be an issue. This was more for trying to help her understand the importance of not carrying the debt. I would have just had her add it to the amount that we are going to pay on Friday.
You Need to Get Angry
But this reiterates that your debt should make you angry. In paying off one of our other cards we ended up having residual interest. I was charged an additional $31 at the end of the bill cycle and once again I just threw away another $31. I spent an hour on the phone with Comcast over an extra $26 they were charging me and I was angry that they would do that to me.
Why do I feel anger with Comcast and yet each month I would give away more than that and not think twice. Is it because I justified it because I had this shiny new thing? Or is it just that we look at credit card debt differently?
Everyone needs to rethink how they view debt and realize that someone is stealing their hard earned money every single day. I had that mindset for a long time and only now do I see the error in my ways.