Buzz-buzz goes the shredder
October 27, 2007 by John in Money, Ramsey
So I’m a long time listener, if not 100% follower of Dave Ramsey. I chopped up most of my credit cards but I never got around to canceling the accounts, most of which have been sitting with zero balances for many months if not years. What made me get off my butt (or on it, I should say, and on the phone) was when I pulled my tri-annual credit report I saw that a couple of my creditors were checking my credit quarterly or even monthly. These are zero-balance accounts! So, enough is enough.
I got some different reactions:
- Bank of America — Surprisingly straight-forward. They asked why I wanted to close it and I told them I was getting out of debt and no longer using credit cards.
- Discover — The hard sell. One new deal after another, then a sermon about how hard it is to live these days without a credit card. I said, “Not if you live on a budget, live within your means, and have an emergency fund.” I may as well have been speaking Martian. She definitely drank the Kool-Aid.
- Home Depot (Citibank) — She was the most playful, no hard sell or sermon. When she asked if there was anything else she can do for me, I said, “Just sit back and listen to the shredder.” That actually got a laugh.
- Sears — A barrage of sales tactics and the most indignant attitudes (I was put on hold a few times and talked to a couple different people).
Here’s a bonus closure. It’s not a credit card but it’s an account I don’t use anymore: Columbia House DVD Club. I just don’t buy that many DVDs. I don’t like having piles of them around the house. I do have a couple of boxes of what I call “keepers” stashed away (Fight Club, Office Space, Serenity, all the Kevin Smith movies, etc.). So I logged in to the site and bonus! It’s already been closed. Whichever card they had on file for me expired, and when I didn’t update the info, they closed the account. Excellent.
This leaves me with my debit card (no overdraft balance) and one Citibank card that has the remainder of my rotating debt on a 3.9% for life balance transfer; that’s mostly motorcycle stuff and it’s dropping rapidly. Oh, and of course my school loan and mortgage. ::sigh::
Addendum
All of the above is why the inside of my house isn’t finished (it doesn’t explain why I haven’t finished some other things, like the lighting on the garage and such — that’s just laziness). If/when the 914s sell, that money goes into the new furnace and water heater fund. Once those two big-ticket items are paid for, the rest of my house remodel will proceed apace.
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