Day 418 - On Debit Card Monthly Fee

I've posted about my personal financial religion before.  The main gist of it is not paying for anything that isn't necessary.  With the passage and implementation of the Durbin Amendment today, I guess the secondary clause of Rule #1 will be expanded.  Both Bank of America and CitiBank (and probably every other banking institution other than Credit Union who are exempted) will institute some form of usage fee upon their customer on debit card use.  I fully understand why the fee are there.  I also don't expect to be using debit card ever again.  Thank you Senator Durbin for your contribution to the financial regulation.

118/79/66 180lb 94 mg/DL

Day 178 - Personal Finance Religion

I'm kind of surprised that I haven't mention my personal finance religion in previous 141 posts.  They're not dogma, but rather useful suggestion.  There's only 2 rules:

1. Never pay interest on credit card.  Always pay off full balance.
2. Never pay parking fee if you can help it.

I've never bought into the concept of credit card use as envisioned by the financial industry.  I don't take out small loan to pay back at 15% interest.  Instead, I use them as convenience alternative to cash, and of course for online purchase.  In my mind, the money I spend in credit card is already deducted from my checking account.  One way for me to be religious about avoid paying interest rate is to pay them off as soon as I'm allowed to.  For example, my credit card allow me to pay current account balance every 3 days.  So I pay off whatever my current balance is every Monday and every 3 days as needed.  I'm not their favor customer, since the last time I paid interest rate on a credit card is due to mailing issue pre-online banking days.  If I cannot afford to pay off that bill in 2 weeks, or if I have a big ticket item that I need to buy, I'll transfer money into my checking account before like I would if I'm paying by check.

Slight addendum.   It would appear that Penn of the Penn & Teller duo also subscribe to my first rule of personal financial religion.  Here's his Penn Point video on this subject.

As for rule #2, I used to work in downtown LA.  Parking is a premium there, even if you can find it.  I just preferred not to visit any place that requires me to feed the meter or pay for the privilege of doing business of just going there.  You can tell that I don't go to Pasadena often unless I have free parking line up before hand.

122/72/71 232.2lb 98 mg/DL