credit card debt

The statistic astounded me. According to the U.S. News and World Report, “The average outstanding credit card balance per household is $7,034.” No way, I thought – only to read a letter to Dear Abby from a college senior who said he would graduate owing several thousand dollars on his credit cards with little or nothing to show for his debt: he had spent the money eating out, going to clubs and living beyond his means. Just paying the minimum balance and never again using the cards, he figured it would take him twelve years to pay off his credit card bills for those meals.
His letter addressed the lessons he had learned in the economic school of hard-knocks, number one lesson being “Live within your means.”
At the age of this big spender I married a man who had already gone through the pain of overwhelming credit debt. He determined to live within his means. For years we owned absolutely no credit cards. We traveled across the United States, bought a couple cars, remodeled our “fixer-upper”, kept a houseful of children fed and clothed and healthy – all without credit cards.
During those years we lived the old axiom, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” Our poor children were culturally deprived: they did not get TV, VCR tapes or taken to the movies. I read books to them until I went hoarse, sent them outside to play in the land of imagination and scoured the newspapers for free or inexpensive events.
About 17-18 years ago we joined the rest of the world and applied for a credit card. Having one is certainly convenient, but I am not sure we did ourselves any favor. A couple times we have edged mighty close to the national average.
The first time was a year filled with one unexpected crisis after another. In the fall, I made a list of who was owed what and decided we could play cards and board games or have a conversation – you know the lost art of opening your mouth and talking with each other in a room without an electronic piece of equipment running in the background?
I began playing the balance transfer credit card game. It goes like this: with our increasing indebtedness, credit card companies inundated us with tempting low introductory interest rates. I would apply, get the card with the low interest rate, transfer all our credit to that company at an interest rate lower than the bank would ever consider. When the introductory low interest rate went up, I cut up that card and found another card offer for low interest and transferred the decreasing load of bills to the new credit card company. It took more than a year of saying, “No, thank you, we can live without that.” We cleared our desk of the bills.
I would love to say that the next time or two we edged closer to the national average it was for such a noble purpose. The most recent plunge into a credit card overload we lived exactly as the college student had: we traveled a great deal more, stayed at more hotels, ate out a lot more than we had and bought items we could have lived without. A few months of high living were followed by several months of not traveling and cutting back on extras in order to quickly pay off the cards and be free of the annoyance of paying bills once again.
That is why our goal with my daughter’s wedding is to pay as we go. It will be interesting as we review our expenses, to see if we meet our goal. If we don’t – you can find me at the park at lunch time eating a peanut butter sandwiches.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. She can be reached by e-mail at jhersh@ipa.net.)