Why Credit Cards Are A Scam

See my prior post as well concerning student loans.

When we took out a mortgage under the original terms it would have cost us over double with the interested added in. What we did instead is pay double and sometimes triple when we could. This allowed us to payoff a 30 year mortgage in a little over 7 years. Saving us over $92,000 in interest payments. So what I did was take much of the money we were saving on mortgage payments and increased my 401k contributions. Not all of it, but some of it so we could live a little bit better then the first 7 years.

We did this because it didn't make any sense to save a whole lot of money in the 401K only to end up spending it on the mortgage payments after we retired. Yes we could have had a more expensive home. BUT we both are happy we didn't so we could have a more financially secure retirement. Now that we're both retired we're mostly a pay-as-you-go couple. Whatever we charge during the month we pay off in full at the end of the month. Meaning we haven't paid interest on any of our credit cards in years. So far, so good.

BTW, this is why I stopped playing the lottery years ago.


I kept track. I spent $950 over the years to win only $91. It didn't help either when I saw the father-in-law finally win $2,000 after spending his crossing guard money of $35 a week for years. It was then his wife saw fit to put that towards a new $8,000 kitchen even though she hadn't played one time. She said at the time how happy "we won". Who's this "we" BS :-)

Course he did win $300 one other time. That's when the mother-in-law decided to put it towards a new washer and dryer costing $800. Fortunately my wife left me keep my $91 winnings over several years. As I recall I reinvested it buying more lottery tickets which didn't win anything. When they passed out the brains I thought they said trains. I took a pass since I wasn't planning on going anywhere at the time. Explains a lot doesn't it?