Credit Card Spending: What’s your first bill in 2008 like?

Today was the day that my first credit card bill landed on my doorstep with a small thud! Thankfully, for me, the thud was due to the included catalogue, NOT the size of the bill. But with the worsening economy in the US, home to the majority of my readers, the first credit card bills of 2008 couldn’t be coming at a worse time. So, as I peruse my light reading, I can’t help thinking of those for whom things are much worse:

So, how did I do? Let’s see. It seems that in December I spent nearly NT$14,738 on things that I can’t remember (I’ll have to look over the bill from December to see what went on!).

But WORSE, I only paid about $7,179 dollars of the outstanding balance off, meaning that I incurred an interest charge on the remainder – I haven’t done that in months. At 11.5% per annum, that’s about NT$174 (or nearly US$5.00).

The other charges are minimal (all currencies NT$32.5:US$1).

  1. The biggest is my regular insurance/investment product that charges about $2000 to my card every month. I should really blog about that product from Cigna but I can’t make up my mind if it’s a good thing or not.
  2. Then I added a $1000 amount for a regular membership of the local video store, as I was in the middle of watching the DVD series The Apprentice Series 4. Very enjoyable overall, though the final candidates didn’t surprise me at all. We still have a few hundred dollars outstanding so we can rent more movies.
  3. Of course, my mobile phone bill came in at $398 but that was for 2 months, not one. I hardly use it these days at all, even for incoming calls. It helps if I charge it and turn it on!
  4. We also went to Hola in Taipei which is a furnishings store near B&Q, where we were looking at the Roomba. Between these two stores, we bought a new shower curtain, and a few odds and ends: total $1233.

So why didn’t I pay off the bill in full? Well, it was for a stupid reason: I was trying to save a round number to open a new CD. I had planned to open one for NT$100,000 (about US$3,000), but that move cost me more than I’d have earned. I prefered to earn 2.4% per annum instead of paying off a bill that charged 11.5% per annum – how dumb is that: to spend $174 to save an extra $20? Not a smart move.

Have you ever made dumb moves with your credit cards? Let’s hear it here.

September Credit Card Spending: Why no cashback spending?

As credit cards become much more prevalent than before, we are finding that there are ways to use credit cards that were not possible just one or two years ago: travelling on the subway in Taipei, buying a cup of coffee (yes, I did that!), paying for doctor’s fees, paying regular bills, fees or memberships, and so on. Some of the ways get quite ridiculous, so it’s getting much harder to resist the swipe and forget reaction of credit card users!

Of course, online it’s possible to spend a lot of money using your credit card. You don’t have to worry about it till MUCH later. Seems ironic that we are actually using our own personal credit cards MUCH LESS than before, even though it’s easier to find ways to use them.

The September Credit Card statement arrived this week, and I have just paid it! So, you’re asking what was on it? Actually, the total this month was only half of last month’s, or NT$6300, a little over US$200.

So how did we rack up that NT$6300 in charges? Well, there was the usual $2000 insurance charge, a telephone charge for my mobile phone, and I recently purchased an annual subscription to EMusic.com, which cost about $3300. Somehow, though going to several nice restaurants, buying clothes, gasoline, books, and other knick-knacks, we managed to avoid swiping for almost all of these things in September.

If you’re really shrewd, though, it is possible to earn quite a bit of interest, or at least reduce your interest payments through balance transfers and through cash back credit cards which credit money to your account everytime you spend.

It seems dumb for me not to charge things to credit cards, when some cards are begging payments to be made through them, and offer 3% or 4% cashback. Now that would be a nice payment of nearly $189 or more on the money I spent! It’s getting harder to argue against using a credit card in those cases.