Generally speaking, I loathe credit cards.
But once in a while, I make an exception.
The latest one involved a company that had tried to woo me for months. Its offer was simple: Get our credit card and the first time you use it, you'll earn 20,000 air travel miles with one of the domestic airlines.
I'm not a loyal airline customer. Ten times out of 10, I opt for price over carrier, which means I don't accumulate miles fast. So the promise of 20,000 miles to go anywhere was enticing enough to forget my general disdain for plastic.
As expected, I got the credit card. More unexpectedly perhaps, right after I made my first purchase with it, I went home and shredded it.
Like I said, I loathe credit cards. I loathe them because they're so pervasive. Practically every bank and every store -- virtual and otherwise -- is willing to give you one.
Not only that, but everything about them, from the initial offer to the dreamy cash advances, is so seductive. You get these letters all telling you you're automatically "preapproved," offering you the kind of validation you could only dream about in junior high. Plus, sometimes you get a free T-shirt for signing up.
Before you know it, you're using some of this "free" money to upgrade from an iPod Nano to a Classic. Soon after, gag gifts and $3.50 lattes don't look like a big deal on credit. Not long after that, you're rationalizing buying toilet paper and ramen with it because it's so much easier than straining your fingers counting paper money.
After you get your first plastic genie, it's a swift descent into full-blown addiction. First, you figure Visa's bound to get lonely if MasterCard's not around. You follow this card with the one bearing the colors of your university, after which you have no choice but to get the one that gives you .0003 cents back on every gallon you purchase at one of the gas stations in town. Then one day as you tally up the balances from all your tiny friends who secured you so much stuff, you realize there's absolutely no way you can pay off this debt without donating plasma for the rest of your stay on Earth. The only solution, you figure, is to apply for another credit card.
But this time, you're going to be smart about it. You're getting one of those with 0 APR and an offer of balance transfers. This will get rid of your debt ... at least until you can get smuggled into Costa Rica or get a second job to actually pay it off.
Of course, I'm speaking in hypotheticals here. None of the above ever happened to me -- or to anyone I know.
But it could happen. After all, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that in 2005 there were 159 million credit card holders in this country. Together, they spent $2.05 trillion and were carrying $832 billion in debt.
I have a hard time making sense of numbers that big because they're so out of this world. But I can make enough sense of them to know that I don't feel bad about taking that last credit card. And I don't feel bad about the 20,000 miles I scored toward a ticket to Toronto. Actually, I don't even feel bad about the possibility that I'll shred again -- if the incentive's high enough.
• Better Left Unsaid appears in Spotlight every other week. Credit applications can be sent to ana.martinez@theeagle.com, but don't expect much of a response.
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