An experiment to put my credit cards “on ice” yielded surprising results.
How many credit cards do you carry? I have two. You know, a spare in case the first one isn’t accepted. Then there are the two debit cards – one for a mortgage offset account – that round out my payment arsenal.
Meanwhile, digital transactions – and especially credit card ones where the bill is not due for maybe a month – “delink” the dollar detriment. This stops rational cost-benefit analysis; because the “cost” part is down the track, our brains skew towards the so-sweet-you-can-almost-taste-it “benefit”. This column is on the up and up, so we won’t talk about any discounts available for paying cash for trades . But a wad of cash goes a long way to snaring the minimum price at outlets that sell, for example, white goods, furniture and jewellery, and – where it was relevant to me – on Facebook Marketplace. For the buyer, the negotiation is easier because, for the seller, cash is just easier. But speaking of ease…Cash was a big fat inconvenience.
And, as a bonus, hello credit card frequent flyer points. So, I am moving back to credit cards but with three important changes now that I know I spend less when I use cash:Recouple any potential credit card purchase with the hip-pocket pain by first recording and deducting from my available money for the month anything I am tempted to spend. This calculation is going on a low-tech, high visibility post-it note wrapped around my credit cards to give me psychological cause for shopping pause.
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