Gather Little by Little

I had the weirdest nightmare the other night. We’ll hopefully be moving soon and our two dogs (a golden retriever and Pomeranian) will be moving with us. I guess I must have been thinking about that in the back of my mind as I had a dream about it.

I dreamed that I went to the local pet store to purchase plastic pet carriers for our dogs. I used cash. I returned home to find that the one I purchased for our Golden Retriever was too small and returned to the store to purchase a larger one. Here’s where the dream turned into a credit card nightmare.

Credit card nightmare

The larger carrier I needed was exponentially more expensive and I didn’t have the cash to pay for it. As I was looking through my wallet to see if I had any cash stashed away in there, a credit card slid out of one of the slots in my wallet. I was surprised as I had cut up all of my credit cards a while back. In my dream, I assumed I must have just missed it and continued to look for extra cash.

The credit card literally jumped into my hand from my wallet and started pulling my hand towards the credit card machine. The evil credit card was forcing me to use it. I fought as hard as I could but it kept pulling my hand towards the machine until finally it was in the card reader. At that point I must have woke myself up.

I was literally in a cold sweat. My heart was beating and I was breathing hard. I realized, it hadn’t been just a dream, but a nightmare. My body was reacting just as if I had woken from a scary nightmare.

I started laughing at the thought of having had a nightmare about an evil credit card. My next thought was I need to tell my readers about this. I walked downstairs to get some water and also wrote down all of the details of the dream so I wouldn’t forget it (I seldom every remember my dreams).

Scared of Credit Cards

It would seem I’ve conditioned myself so much that I’m literally scared to death to have or use a credit card. I know that seems a bit silly, but based on my dream it must be true. Prior to my financial epiphany, we used credit almost daily and never paid off the balance in full. I can remember times where we were literally living off our cards. We used them to buy gas, food, and even paid our bills with them. We were literally living a credit card nightmare. I don’t ever want to go back to those times.

The cycle was hard to break, as each time we would use the cards, we would just raise the bill for the following month further reducing the amount of cash we had. We finally got smart and just got rid of them. No cards, no temptation, no spending. The first few months were hard. I recall a few times when we literally had a 0 or negative balance in our accounts. We had a few overdraws and had to pay the associated fees. I didn’t like it, but looking back the fees were far less than the interest on the credit cards.

No credit cards in my wallet

One thing I can promise is that you will never see another credit card in my wallet. Some of you probably think that doesn’t make financial sense, especially with all of the “rewards” cards out there. While that may be true, not having them is the safest choice for me. I lived with credit cards for many years, and used them irresponsibly. Not having them with me separates me from them as far as the east is from the west.

Here’s the best part:  I haven’t missed credit cards one little bit. I haven’t even once wished I had a credit card. My monthly payments are getting smaller, the balance is quickly going down, and I am paying fewer credit card bills each month. Watching those credit card accounts go away is a wonderful feeling.

How about you, ever had a credit card nightmare? Add a comment!

Photo by: ribena_wrath