I logged into to my credit card account today and noticed three "interest rate adjustment" debits to my account totalling: $45.69. The transaction dates were from August, September and October of 2007. I was curious so I investigated what these payments were for, and discovered that they were the last three finance charges I had paid in August, September and October. This was also a very stressful period in my life so I apparently was not my finances as I normally would. I could not figure out why these amounts were being debited now so I downloaded an old statement and found that I had a grace period interest rate of 0% ending in July, 2008.
I had originally opened up a card with HSBC because I was interested in the 1% cash back rewards on all purchases. Unlike some credit card companies, the 1% cash back reward has so far been given without any question. I also opened the card because I was ticked off by the customer service from MBNA. I had paid a finance charge of $12.63 to transfer my balance from MBNA to HSBC which to date is the only fee I’ve paid to the company (at the time I didn’t know that there were fees to transfer balances. My reading of the contract said there was no balance transfer fee…but I was wrong). However since I began using the HSBC card, I’ve received a total of $150 in cash back rewards in one year. However, HSBC also has this bad habit of mailing me all sorts of random crap such as privacy changes, checks to use that wind up in the firepit and whatnot. This costs money. So who is paying for it? I’m guessing the people who don’t manage their credit card habits well. As well as advertizers who make their membership agreement look like they are checks that can be cashed in exchange for a membership.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been thinking of cutting all credit card usage from my life (husband never uses a credit card as its just too complicated). I don’t have a problem with managing my finances (paying in full, for example). But I do have a problem with all this waste created by me using a credit card. Its quite wasteful and since the main reason I really use the card is so that I can get 1% off of every purchase, it seems like a tremendous waste of resources: get 1% cash back + 1 ton of paper waste. I am not sure I want to live with consciously generating that amount of waste, especially now that I’m aware of it. I think I will eventually close all my cards down after our move. Since I have good credit should I need to open another card (and really I don’t as I have a line of credit open), I could. But I won’t.
