Post Menopausal

I've battled with myself over the tempting 3X Well Fargo rewards program, even telling myself I know I'd put the money in that account first to use,  instead of a reward paying credit card bill that'd come due each month, but there's a niggling and very loud worm in my brain telling me, "Don't do it."

I need to model not doing it for my kids who have a decided lapse in some of their choices, decisions, or judgements.

It'd just be better for me to continue to spout aloud, as does Dave Ramsey, "I don't use credit," even if the rewards are quite lucrative.  They are only profitable for idgits like me who have pretty good self-discipline.

No more supporting an industry that feeds on the less fortunate – I mentioned the fact that you no longer have to deal with deceitful companies, but closing your accounts will also end your relationship with an industry based on predation of the less fortunate.  According to the FDIC 93% of fees are charged to 14% of credit card users.

I've long known that to be a true concept, but I didn't know the scary statistic until I read this blog entry today.

So essentially the $600 I'd expect to earn in rewards would come off the backs of the less fortunate.  

Nope, I can't do that.  Indirectly this would be the case, in actuality the stores pay up, but they do so via their profits from many folks buying what they can't afford with credit.  If me using a rewards card tempts others to overspend, I'm not playing that game.

I know my itty bitty amounts mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, except from within my own conscience that I feel I gotta follow.  My moral compass bellows at me.

I don't smoke or drink either, obviously for health reason, but also I wouldn't pay good money for either tobacco nor alcohol, and I see another correlation here.  I believe that the marketers are also predatory as well.  Look how many liquor stores are in very poor communities, now surging into Third Worlds as well.

I gotta take a stand here on the rewards card.

My last reward situation came from a debit card, now not available.  

If I'm not learning then I feel overcome by inertia and stagnation, thus my books, Ted Talks and podcasts.  A 60 something year old man called into the Dr Joy Brown radio show podcast, complaining to her that any woman he dated only cared if he had money to blow on them.  He went on to state that he only dated those under 50, "as everyone knows women lose their looks by age 50," he rudely told the doctor.

Ouch, I thought.

"No wonder you feel that way," she chided him.  "Chasing after younger women?  What do you bring to the table at your age, but money? They're not thinking you are good looking."

Turns out he might've been neither, as the call progressed it became glaringly obvious that he was short on money (which to me at age 60+ demonstrates poor financial acumen or a lack of motivation) and if he was all that, if he looked like George Clooney, then women would've been flocking to him.

I'd say that women after 50 sure don't look like we did in our 20s, but more likely we just get scarier.  We feel more powerful and so very sure of ourselves, so less likely to put up with the BS of an older man looking for a nursemaid, so many of us now so very happy on our own, buying our own houses, paying for our own retirement, taking cruises, and having adventures on our own.

So many men who didn't participate in the child raising as they should've done, leaving their dowdy-to-them wives to run the household that they, the men, feel stifled them, now old and lonely, alienated from the kids they'd abandoned, strangers to their grandchildren.  I see so many strong, steady women fighting uphill battles, struggling hard, but still happy, as they eventually feel more victorious from a job well done.

My hat is off to all of those single men who've raised their children and to the married men who stayed with their families, an increasingly rare occurrence.  Even in the church even in the Evangelical churches I prefer, the divorce rate mirrors that of the rest of society.  I ought to know, I contributed to the statistic.  Sorry 'bout that.

So here at age 58, an invisible age for us post menopausal women, which I personally feel is very liberating, I feel compelled to keep moving forward, to teach my kids to live frugally, to avoid debt, to stay in church, to be moral and honest, to then tend to their own children appropriately.