Credit Card

I paid my credit bill this month. Nothing special in that, except for the fact its the first time in 10 years that I do not have any outstanding balances on any of the cards that I own.

When I first accepted the offer of a Citibank telesales girl in 1996, little did I realize that it'll be another 10 years before I could claim myself debt free, car and housing loans aside.

The first month itself, I owed about 2000 bucks, and things went downhill since. Somehow many things happened along the way that conspired to make sure that I kept a balance.

First I owed large sums of money due to making cash advances to pay stock market losses during the Asian economic crisis. I then overspent on various vices for a few years before deciding to clean up my act when I met my wife .

When we got married four years ago, we made steady progress in paying the debt down, before house moving again forced us to pile up.

Each time when the end seemed near, something always seem to crop up and we left a balance.

We did have some other savings, but the card debt was something we wanted to get rid off using our monthly cashflow.

Finally, last month, by divine providence some extra cash came unexpectedly, and now, I'm finally able to say, truly, yes, its paid. Phew.

My good friend Egg never had a credit card and was planning to finally get one a few months ago. To him, my sincere advice is - make sure you pay it off every month! If you leave it hanging once, it'll hang on to you like a leech. I've been there :)