I know you’re sick of all this penny-pinching savings advice, sick of learning how to use a bank account, sick of Mark lecturing on how saving $10 a week gives you $520 at the end of the year.  If so, you might just love today’s article, a little story about a girl named Jane, who is going to take her credit and flush it down the toilet.

Jane is 22 years old, and fresh out of college.  She has recently been given 10 different credit card offers in the mail, and she signed up for all of them.  Now she has 10 cards with $2000 minimum balance on each card.  “All right!” Jane thought, “Twenty grand to go party!”

And party she did, in only a week she had maxed out all the cards, but she had some nice furniture to show for it, and a boyfriend that she was able to buy a new Bowflex for (he liked working out but hated the gym).  “I can’t believe my friends don’t use their credit cards this much” Jane thought, “look at all this great stuff I got!”

Now the end of the month came, and with it the bills. 10 $40 minimum payments, “oh well” she thought “just have to do things the old-fashioned way for a while”  The payments weren’t killing her, but not having the spending power of a few weeks earlier was.

The next day Jane’s boyfriend called her up, “Jane, I need to get some new connectors for my Bowflex, I think I broke a power rod.”  “Shoot!” Jane thought, “those Bowflex payments were coming off of my VISA 3.”  She overnighted a $400 check to that credit card so there would be enough available, hoping her paycheck would come before it hit her account.  Meanwhile, her boyfriend hung up because Jane had left him hanging.

Next month, Jane was a bit wiser.  She had to be, boyfriend dumped her (she was still making payments on that dumb machine), checking account had been overdrawn 4 times, and she forgot a payment, which sent all of her cards to the default rate of 28%.  She had to become an e-bay pro, and sell a lot of the things that she purchased with the cards.  Her apartment looked more and more empty as movers came to take the couch, TV, Stereo, appliances, jewelry, even her prized DVD collection slowly disappeared.

And she wanted me to share this story with my readers, because she hates the fact that credit cards still get sent to her telling her that she is pre-approved when her credit score is 640, and she doesn’t qualify even for a loan against her car.

Jane, I changed your name, the rest of the story is as you sent it to me.  Thanks!