As I’ve written before, Mr. Kablog and I have an absurd amount of credit credit cards with credit limits that far exceed our gross income. They were collected over several years.

I opened the cards, which have actually improved our credit score, because I’ve been tempted by juicy rewards, or transferred balances to take advantage of 0 percent interest rate offers. We always had the money to pay off the zero percent cards, but figured if Chase wants to give us free money, we might as well save ours and earn 5 percent interest in a savings account.

But after yet another stupid mistake, I’m throwing in the credit card arbitrage towel.

Around Christmas, I sent in a minimum payment of $50 when the minimum required by the card company was $66! Duh! The boo-boo would have cost me $69 in fees and interest had the guy on the phone not been understanding.  And the interest rate jumped from 0 percent to 7.99 to reward my stupidity.

To reset the interest rate to zero, Mr. Kablog, the primary cardholder, would have had to call in to ask about reversing the rate increase….which I knew he’d be loathe to do.

I admitted defeat instead and dug into our emergency savings account to pay the $3,300 balance. It’s not like my money was earning a nice interest rate in savings anyway.

But I’m serving myself up as an example. If you try to get too cute with credit, you are bound to eventually make a mistake, even if you think you are organized and have everything under control.

Resolution for 2009: Pare down my credit cards even more.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 2:25 pm and is filed under credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.