ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, September 23, 1996             TAG: 9609240024
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1    EDITION: METRO 
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE

WHY'S IT A SIN TO PAY OFF PLASTIC?

Some of the credit card people are thinking about turning the Great American Debt Ethic around.

That is, if you pay off your bill on time every month, you're no longer a pillar of the community or an example for the youth of the nation.

You're a louse, maybe even a Communist.

Very nervous old people who were here during the Great Depression like to pay off their balances. They remember that not paying the rent on time - there was no minimum payment allowed - meant that the sheriff came and levied on the furniture.

Of if you missed the water bill, a man came along with a long bar and cut off the water at the street - in front of the neighbors, usually.

Now, you pay off your plastic and the credit card people hate you for it.

I've never been all that crazy about moneylenders, but I'd have to say the credit card people have a point:

If you deadbeats out there keep paying up every month, those guys can't make any money charging you interest.

Don't you people know how to act in America anymore?

Don't you know you're supposed to come up with only the minimum payment every month until they probate your will?

Where's the fun in charging stuff if you pay for it right away? Takes all the suspense out of it.

Any American who cares about the economic stability of this country never pays off the Christmas bills until June.

A lot of people in this country have high-enough credit limits to buy a modest-size jet. I think you'd have to go the minimum-payment route if you did that.

Right now, we could take a nice cruise on plastic, except we tend to clutch each other and cry a lot when we get out of the sight of land. Both of us get nervous on a pontoon boat on Smith Mountain Lake.

We also don't have the clothes you need for a cruise. We'd have to charge a lot of stuff at J.C. Penney and ride the old minimum payment there.

Imagine getting invited to dinner at the captain's table and having nothing to wear - although I personally hope I never get invited to do anything like that.

If the credit card people will be patient, I may put a snowblower on plastic soon, and you don't pay for one of those things right away.

Then neither the credit card people nor the banks nor the Department of Transportation will have to worry a lot about an awful lot of snow this winter.

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