thank you for bringing such joy to this forum and others (here's the link to your reusable toilet paper story)

Glad to hear you had a good day and are out and about as usual. Recycling is an inefficient answer to the problem of too much trash. Best not to buy the 'trash' in the first place. That's hard to do, when at least half of what's on the shelf in the grocery store is *plastic* and will NEVER go away. (I heard that statistic on PBS radio this morning, a rebroadcast from the BBC.) I've just realized that I will soon reach the last year where I can offhandedly refer to being 'in my seventies'. <sigh>

Another great experience just the other day ... was it while I was in hosp.? Don't remember. First word I tried "wares", as often do, or "swear". "R", third position, was green. "A", second, yellow: correct letter, wrong location. Wanted to try "a" at location 1, so what word would I need with "r" as third letter? Where did "acrid" come from ... sliding into my brain? Let's give it a try. First letter was green, also second, and third was green from the start ... and so were 4 and 5! Comment was something like "Magnificent"! And I was pleased with myself: was it once that I'd ever before got it on second try? Don't remember. By far the largest number of winners on the way to 93% success rate for me is the fourth try. ole joyful P.S. I've had a phone with multiple capabilities for just over four years, so do a lot of stuff using it. Having some problems, and the guys where I got it are trying to get me to pitch it and get a better one (pretty well same price). o j

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.