You don't. We've already established that. That was never even an issue. I was merely trying to ascertain what purpose it served to call the credit company each and every year to tell them to lower your limit back down to $35k after they unilaterally raised it. And now you've answered that question. I'm not sure why we're seemingly going around in circles here. In the post to which you responded, I stated that if you did it because it gave you some sort of piece of mind, i.e., you didn't want a higher limit, that of course was fine. I was just curious if there was some general benefit to doing so of which I am not aware. The answer, apparently, is no.

Some folks paying that high interest on those credit card debts may not have seen this, last time around. I'm wondering how much of a reduction they might have been able to achieve with the store-issued card people - that usually charge 25 - 28%. Unless the stuff that you bought is tax-deductible ... that interest must be paid with after-tax income, folks. If you're in 20% tax bracket, it means that when you earn $5.00, you pay tax of $1.00 and have $4.00 left to buy things. So if your interest rate is 28%, divide that by 4 to get 7, then add the 7 to the 28 to make 35. You earn $35.00, pay $7.00 tax and have $28.00 on hand to pay that interest on $100. purchase (suppose you were dealing with a year, but you must pay some monthly ... but usually the required amount is only slightly above the amount of interest added that month). Which means that if you pay only minimum monthly, or slightly more ... ... that bill will run (almost) forever. Oh - you figure to die before "forever"? Right ... most of us do, don't we? Good wishes for paying your non-deductible debts down quickly (and probably the deductible ones, as well). ole joyful

Scarlett, I don't think anyone has intended to give you "breezy advice", so I too am sorry if I have contributed to your hurt feelings. DH and I have been through several periods of difficult times. When we were first married, he didn't tell me he had debts from his previous marriage that he had walked off from when he joined the Navy. We returned to the same area after his discharge, and his creditors found us after we had acquired some cheap furniture and a car, on credit. Let's just say, at that time, "The Honeymoon was Over". The unexpected debt put us in dire straits because by that time we had a two-year-old and an infant. The car was totally an unwise purchase. DH wanted it so badly and he and the car dealer ganged up on me. I could've been the bad guy and refused to sign, but DH was getting lots of overtime at his job and I was lulled into a false sense of security at the ripe old age of 23. Of course the overtime dried up soon after. Then the car payment took all of one week's pay and then some. Shortly after that, there was a trucker's strike (this was in 1970) and DH was certain he would be laid off. So instead of waiting for the inevitable, he drove from KS to IN, where his brother lived, because his brother told him jobs were easy to find there and they paid higher. What he neglected to say was that the standard of living was somewhat higher there, too. DH found a job there and a house to rent, so we piled our meager belongings into a U-Haul trailer and moved. I was not one to run out on debts, so our landlord was paid what we owed and we notified our debtors of our new address. Of course this did not solve our financial troubles. It took me far away from my family and put us in an area where snow is on the ground from before Halloween to Mother's Day. We discovered our landlord was an alcoholic who was given to coming to my door and screaming at me for some imagined offense. His wife would let herself in while we were gone (they lived next door) and inspect, and leave me nasty notes. But I digress. I take the credit for getting us out of debt. I went to the library and checked out everything I could find about how to save money. One of the books I remember well was "Champaigne Living on a Beer Budget". It was then that I learned about how credit works, among other things. That first winter, I made my son's coat out of DH's Navy dress uniform. My daughter's coat was made from mine, as I had found a coat for myself at a yard sale. My mother had given me a bag of fabric scraps and I made my kids' clothes from that. I didn't have many clothes but I wore what I had. DH, for his job, had to have matching twill pants and shirts and steel-toe boots, so that took a chunk out of his pay. The first thing that I did with my new-found training, was to contact each creditor and ask them what was the least they would take to cancel the contract. I was surprised that they all had an amount right on the tip of their tongue. One of them quoted a realistic amount, that I could meet by arranging with the bank that held the car loan to just pay the interest for a couple of months. I shut everything down that I could. We ate a lot of macaroni and beans, drank nonfat dry milk. DH had no room to complain because they were, after all, his debts and he was in a long-term doghouse as it was. Getting the first creditor paid off was the hardest, but it was the "chink in the armor". With that payment off our backs, I was able to double up on the payments for another creditor, specifying that additional payment was to go ON THE PRINCIPAL ONLY. Before long, I had another one paid off. That following summer, we had enough money that I could use $20 every other Saturday at yard sales. When my $20 was gone, I was done. But I managed to buy, through that summer, jeans and coats and shoes for my kids, toys for the coming Christmas, tools for DH. When the magic day came that the car was paid off, it was like Christmas to me. Gradually we got on our feet. We bought a mobile home on credit and moved into a trailer park. It was our own home and the payment and lot rent was less than the rent we had been paying. Plus it was closer to DH's work. Then he was laid off. Then our son had an illness that landed him in the hospital and us with no insurance. DH got another job. He took a second job at a gas station. I used my skills to get things paid off. But it was hard because he still just "didn't get it". He thought he deserved something for all the hard work he was doing and kept buying things on credit: color TV's, expensive fishing equipment that he hardly used, an El Camino. I refused what I could, and we fought almost constantly. At one point it looked like our marriage was over. I was so sick and tired of being poor and him not taking it seriously. I took the kids and moved back to where my family was. He ended up selling what little we had and following, and we managed to patch things up, but it meant we were starting over again financially. I was able to get a job that paid pretty well, so at last we were able to have two incomes, but it meant the kids, by then 11 and 12, had no one at home with them. They got into so much mischief. If the neighbors weren't complaining, the kids were tattling on each other. But we were able to scrape together enough to buy a house in an older neighborhood that was not far from work for either of us. As time wore on, I doubled up on the house payments to shorten the length of our loan. Eventually I had the house paid off. We saved $17,000 in interest. Neither of our kids went to college. Our daughter dropped out of high school and our son, though he graduated, was not college material. DD made me a grandmother at the age of 42, and then didn't take her maternal responsibilities seriously, so we threw money at that problem for awhile. Then DH began having trouble with his knees and we discovered he had degenerative arthritis. Not long after, he became disabled. I had quit working, so I had to go find a job again. Shortly after that, it became clear we were going to have to adopt the grandsons. Then our son started having panic attacks and we had to throw money at that for awhile. And now, here we are. DH is 65 and I am 62. He has finally been able to have surgery, recovered well and is getting around better. Our grandsons are 18 and 19. The 19YO will graduate from HS this spring. The other is with DD and will probably drop out, not having applied himself and having nearly enough credits to be able to graduate any time soon. DS has managed to recover. We bought a small house that he lives in. He pays us an agreed amount every month and the house will be his soon. DD has just had bariatric surgery and then lost her job, so she is now looking for another. We bought another small house that she may end up having to move into for awhile. We are considering offering her the same opportunity to own a home that we offered DS. Neither of them have good credit so a conventional loan is out of the question for both. It seems everyone has to learn how to manage their money the hard way. But we are not in bad shape, considering all. We owe no debts. We own our own home plus the two little houses, free and clear. We own one recent-model extended cab pick-up. Signed our 12YO pick-up, that was well cared for, over to DGS that lives with us. We have money in the bank. I am now retired. My retirement check starts this month. It's not huge, but it's more than I thought it would be. Sorry for the length of this, but it illustrates the ups and downs of life. There have been times when I thought we were in such a horrible financial mess that we would never be able to recover. But we did. It took some know-how, but mostly just dogged determination. I shed many tears of hopelessness and frustration, spent many sleepless nights of worry. So trust me when I say "live within your means" and "Pay off all your creditors", I speak from experience. There is nothing breezy about it.

Cynic >This one has me confused though: "...my cell phone provider gouged me for 4 consecutive months of payments even though I was paying cash at their store." If you have auto-pay, why are you paying cash at the store? Something's missing or I'm not following something. I was paying my bill in cash at their store. I had already called the (cell phone provider) ahead of time and told them I would be doing this. Each month my bill would arrive, each month it kept reflecting an overpayment. I would call them and they said it would be corrected. This happened FOUR months in a row. I contacted the credit card company and told them to cancel the card. Same thing happened with them. They would say it would be canceled. The following month I would get a bill for the same incorrect amount. I finally spoke to someone at the CC co. who said until the cell phone provider notified them, I would continue to be responsible for the charges whether they were right or wrong. They never said ANYTHING about having to have a cancellation number. BOTH the cell phone provider and CC company neglected to inform me of this necessary requirement. I wonder why? Well the reason why, is because THEY were MAKING MONEY and didn't want it to stop. These companies do not make it easy. They don't fully inform you when you sign up, and they don't tell you what you really need to do in order to cancel this type of payment. I finally contacted a consumer newspaper reporter. She said she doesn't care for automatic payments for the same reason and gets many calls regarding this. She contacted the cell phone provider's publicity relations department. That worked. They must have called my CC company because everything was taken care of within the month and I didn't receive any more credit card bills. My cell phone bills are what they are supposed to be. I still pay in cash. I no longer have the credit card. They send me solicitations all the time. Thanks, but no thanks. Contacting the AG's office is a good idea. dadoes >dreamgarden probably thought if he/she paid cash, the autopay wouldn't trigger. That's not necessarily the case. I wonder what IS the case? Who at EITHER company, was supposed to tell me I needed a cancellation number in order to stop the autopay? Out of a total of seven calls, 4 to the cell phone provider and 3 to the CC company, not ONE person mentioned this. Don't they teach customer service reps this information? I no longer wanted auto-pay and told them this. I said I would be paying in cash from now on and to cancel auto-pay. I don't understand how I could have been any clearer. >I recall a couple cases where I work of customers having autopay set up through CheckFree. One fellow died, his wife had NO CLUE about any of their finances and the auto-pay kept coming, for MONTHS. She no longer wanted the service, but she didn't contact us or was even aware the service existed, so how are we to know that? "How are we to know that?". How did you find out that her husband died? How do you know the wife no longer wanted the service if she was never contacted? Was she on the account too? Doesn't your company have some policy regarding taking money from a deceased person's account? > The other case, the fellow changed his account services, but didn't change the monthly autopay amount. We contacted him, he still didn't change the amount. Built up a large credit that had to be refunded when he eventually closed the service. When the fellow called to change his account services, was he asked if the present autopay amount was ok? If he was changing his account services, this would seem to be a logical question to ask a customer. Was he notified by telephone or in writing? This is why I like to receive paper billing. Sometimes when a credit card company calls (and leaves a message), they don't always state the nature of their business. When I have called back, they try to sell me some service or item I'm not interested in. Now I don't return calls unless they leave a message telling me something is wrong, or needs to be corrected. I had them put this in my file. I don't want to be bothered with solicitations or irrelevant matters that aren't directly related to some kind of problem with my account. In my opinion the above examples are just more reason to pay as you go and not allow company's to have recurring access to your bank account.