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Discuss this article (0 Comments)I always pay cash. You know where you are with cold hard cash. You know instantly whether you can afford something or not – if you haven’t got the readies you can’t pay for the goods – put the merchandise down, step away from the shop.
Parting with the folding stuff is psychologically more traumatic than handing over a piece of plastic and putting a squiggle on a receipt, so you think twice about spending so freely. Using cash, therefore, actually saves you money.
If you start paying with a debit card it becomes a full time job keeping track of what you’ve spent; if, that is, you keep track at all. One day you decide to check your balance and you have a heart attack because all your money has disappeared.
Surviving the heart attack is a mixed blessing – you’re alive, but you have no money left on which to live. It is worse still if you don’t realize that all your money has been drained from your account and you go out on a date, have a romantic meal for two, try and pay the bill and your card is rejected. Then, inevitably, so are you.
Credit cards are even worse. They can make Stig of the dump feel like King of the castle, but it’s an illusion. I know this well but then those pesky marketing gurus at Emirates get involved. And they’re good. They’re very good…and so it came to pass that last year my defences were breached and, with the promise of 40,000 free air miles, I signed up for a credit card.
My shiny new card felt a bit like having a Rottweiler as a guard dog – it was comforting to know that it was there but I just hoped that it was never called into action, being well aware, as I was, that it could do far more harm than good.
After a year of straining at the leash I decided to have the Rottweiler put down and cut up the card. The reason, as is the way with such things, is that a younger, fitter version has come along. It is a different company, offering more goodies.
This is a difficult concept to grasp in the age of the credit crunch but the banks are literally shoving air miles down my throat and showering me with credit. I am assuming that in their attempts to stimulate consumer activity the bank see me as a negligent fool who will rack up huge debt, forget to pay it off and then they can charge me billions of dirhams worth of interest which will, in one fell swoop, rectify their balance sheets.
Naïve, I think is the word. Still, banks didn’t get where they are today without being more than a little naïve.
Frankly the banks are the least of my worries. For the last 20 years I have berated friends and family for using cards instead of cash and when I am spotted with my new flexible friend I suspect that I will end up with credit-card-egg all over my face.
Indeed, it has started already and I’ve had my new card for less than a week. I was enthusing to a friend about a meal the other day where I was told by the waiter that if I paid by Visa I would receive a 30% discount. So obviously I paid by Visa.
My friend just looked at me, and, with disbelief in her eyes, 20 years of abuse ringing in her ears and a slight shake of the head, muttered with incredulity, “You paid by card?!”. It was the same tone that I imagine she would use if I had told her that I had just boiled her family and eaten them for breakfast.
In my defence, not only did I get a 30% discount but I also earned a few air miles to boot. In these troubled times you’ve got to take what you can get. I remember the days when cash was King – you paid cash, you got a discount. Now, despite reports to the contrary, it seems that credit is the new force in town. The King is dead; long live the King.