Thank you very much, Kris. I've had some health problems, but they haven't caused more than minor reductions in what I can do, and thankful every day for that. Good genes, I think. Started to smoke at 15, after a few months liked neither the taste nor the cost - so had sense enough to quit. Daughter, who has dual citizenship, her mother being from Iowa, has spent most of the last 20 years or so in the U.S., most of it in Phoenix, recently moved to the Atlanta area, her husband being from there. She comes up for a few days every few years and said summer of '18 that they'd have to celebrate my 90th during her trip up in Aug.: flew me to Phoenix for my 8oth, ten years ago. At the party, when I said that I'd been rather worried after the announcement, as birthday wasn't till Jan, so figured I didn't dare die in between, or wouldn't be keeping up my end of the bargain, there was some laughter. The old guys at the village church that I attend had a group called "Senior Mens' Coffee Hour" on Thursday mornings, that they renamed the "ROMEOs", as in "Retired Old Men Eating Out", (and wouldn't touch my suggestion that it should be"ROMDOs", as in "Retired Old Men Drinking Out" with a 10-foot pole) give each guy with a birthday that month a cupcake with a candle on top at the meeting. I hold mine at arm's length: if I blow it out, called "blowhard", if not, "bit off more than you could chew, huh?", and laughter whichever way. When the cake came out at the party, the numbers were facing me, but the cameras were on the other side. I was holding the cake at arm's length, and turned it around to have the numbers "89.5" facing the cameras ... ... and gave a sigh of relief: happy to be off the hook! Hope you're having aq good year. I spend uite a bi of time over on Kitchen Table. ole joyful

Mother's day has come and gone... so should this thread! I am struggling with some of the statements. I justified the reference to our levels of earnings by saying that most of the stuff that we buy using "credit" cards isn't deductible, so using them isn't going to increase our amount of after-tax cash on hand, which will have an impact on our pre-tax income, as well. Almost none of the things we buy are tax deductible, so this is simply not relevant... because it doesn't change between the alternatives. The only way this becomes relevant is if you are taking money out of your traditional IRA to use for interest payments... So the entire before tax / after tax logic pretzel only works for one specific thing that is not mentioned in the original post. Next, a 28% credit card rate is not equal to a 28% savings rate. This is the difference between compounding interest and effective interest. Even though the two are calculated the exact same way, and compounding is a type of effective, compounding grows but effective interest can shrink. Credit cards are basically rolling installment loans with an 8 year and 4 month payback and no early payment penalty. So the total interest you pay on a $5,000 purchase would be $5,892 over 8.33 years. People will often struggle to convert avoidable interest to investment returns, and most people shouldn't need to do this. The easiest way to do so is by using a version of the Modigliani-Miller theorem. If you want to equate a loan into an investment, then just hypothetically use the loan to purchase the investment and find the interest rate where the total payments on the loan = the total return of the investment. The equivalent investment rate of a 28% credit card, is 9.38%. However, if you are not working with the capital structure of a business, that is pretty useless information. Unless you are borrowing to invest, you should just avoid equating loans to investments. It isn't going to provide useful information. ---- Math questions are best solved with math and not an application of some vague wisdom. Interest is not that hard to calculate, so learn to calculate it. There are times when using your credit card is wise and there are times when it is not. Generally speaking though, balances on high interest credit cards are a symptom of another problem. Typically, either frivolous spending or insufficient income. So, if you can, work on that problem first and the credit card problem tends to fix itself.

Agreed—OJ is a prince!

Greetings again, folks. Some time ago one of the old guys used to bring out a cupcake bearing a candle, Jasdip, but it hasn't been happening for a couple of years or so. I spoke earlier of having forgotten to take an empty water bottle to my friend's house on an earlier trip, but we'd emptied a second and were on our last bottle so I was taking the two empties when the young woman picked me up. A couple of days later my water provider friend called me from the end of my lane, saying that he was very reluctant to tackle my snowy lane, so was leaving a bottle at the end of my lane. There was next to no conversation or I would have told him that there was a fairly thin layer of snow the day before when I'd walked out for my mail, and no drifts in the lane. My landlord or his son had driven a pickup truck up the lane after the first snow leaving a track in the rather thin snow blanket, and the second had added only a little more. We lack a sleigh but I took my scoop shovel out, installed the water bottle on it and hauled it in without any tipsys: I'd thought maybe son would need to tie a rope around the neck and walk beside to keep the bottle upright had it tipped. A few days later, after rain had removed the snow, a previously unknown lady had picked me up with a couple of bags of groceries and we were talking at my house (she gave me her name and phone no., saying maybe she could drive me occasionally) when my water friend drove in with the second bottle. I felt the need to tease him a little, asking whether he was letting his venturesome spirit shrink a bit in his advancing years. It's rather pleasant to realize that winter is about half over. Earlier I'd thought of my life here being rather open-ended, but I've been thinking that even a couple of minor restrictions in my capabilities would mean that I could no longer live here. Good wishes to you all. ole joyful