Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Paper or Plastic?

I've never had a credit card before. "Why?" - you may be asking. During my studying years, I didn't see the need to have one - I was staying at home and studying reasonably nearby. Plus, my dad didn't want to give us, children, a supplementary credit card for fear of us running up the bill irresponsibly. So, while in school, credit cards were a no-no. I just relied on physical paper cash (and the occasional 'tumpang guna' of mum's card... haha).

After a year of working, and a couple of people pestering me, I decided to go ahead and get one. It took me a couple of months to actually start looking around for the benefits each bank offered for the range of credit I was qualified for. I'd pretty much settled on which bank to sign up with and was waiting to catch my friend online to ask her more about it, since she is in that line. And then came Budget 2010... and the RM50 tax the Government was going to charge per principal credit/charge card and RM25 for each supplementary card. And so, now it's back to credit card-less me!

After all, the only need I have for a credit card (at the moment) is convenience when buying petrol. And also, some retail outlets such as Starbucks and F.O.S have discounts when you use a certain credit card to pay (but I've cut down patronising these places for the past few months, so... again, I'm not missing much). Otherwise I'm pretty content using cash for all my purchases.

Therefore, until the Government decides to abolish that policy or the banks decide to absorb that tax, I'm not going to sign up for any credit cards! (unless, for some unforeseen reason, in future I start traveling overseas a lot... then that's a different case.. haha) So, I'm going paper all the way! hmm... but our Ringgit isn't really made of paper these days... some sort of plastic-paper hybrid material... RM5 is completely plastic though... yeah, I'm losing my thoughts again... Here ends this post.

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