The Truth Will Set You Free – Part 10 of 20
I recently read a post on Johnny B. Truant’s blog that really hit home. So much so that I wanted to do two things: share it with my readers and 2) think on and write about each piece of his post. The post is “20 Truths About Life No One Wants To Believe” and the tenth one (we’re half-way there!) I am going to tackle is:
10. You shouldn’t buy what you can’t afford.Want that TV? Wait until you have enough cash to pay for it. Want to take the vacation but need to borrow from your credit card (and then not pay it off in full) to do it? You’d better wait. I’ve violated this plenty. Sometimes, for necessities, it feels essential. I almost always regret it.
This is, shall we say, a real growth opportunity for me.
Granted I’m not as bad as some, those who charge everything on their credit cards, pay the minimum payment (or just a bit more), but I don’t set my standards based on what others might do. I decide what the ideal is for me and work to live to that standard.
What I do is be all clever when it comes to credit cards and buying things I don’t have the cash for. I use my very good Credit Score to move money around when I need to and take advantage of new cards to make big purchases, or transfer balances to cards with zero-percent-for-some-period cards.
Mind you I don’t do this all the time, I’m not pathological about it, but I have done it (and am doing right now, actually).
The reason this is a problem is because it violates my standard of paying for things when I buy them. It just plain feels right to do it that way.
What’s one of my primary goals? To pay off the balances, and to do so way before the zero-percent period ends.
In my mind, it’s just the right thing to do.