Credit Card Temptation

November 18, 2009

Interview with Jim Randel, author of the book The Skinny on Credit Cards, How to Master the Credit Card Game

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Mike Carruthers:
Especially in a bad economy it can be very tempting to buy things with credit cards.

Jim Randel:
One of the recommendations that we make is wrap a rubber band around your credit card. Maybe it takes five seconds to get it off  - but let it remind you that every time you’re using it you’re borrowing money from a bank.

Jim Randel

Jim Randel, author of the book The Skinny on Credit Cards, says getting a good handle on what money and credit really mean to you is a good place to start to get control of your finances.

You know some people think live for today, carpe diem.  Other people think neither nor a borrower or lender be, those are two extremes but I think one of the important things is understand how you feel about money and how it’s inducing you - maybe even subliminally.

For many of us, money has a lot of emotional meaning.

What it means is freedom, what it means is security, what it means is ego. So all of these hugely powerful emotions that we all struggle with are controlled to some degree by money.

Jim says getting out of debt takes a real commitment and perhaps you can enlist your credit card company to help.

Sometimes just by calling and jaw boning with your credit card company you can get them to lower interest rates. And that’s a big deal today the average interest rate is somewhere between 15 and 18%. So even if you can get it down to 10% that’s going to make a big difference.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.