If I had long standing debt on a credit card, I’d be paying an extremely high interest rate on that debt even with a >800 credit score.

If I have a balance that’s completely paid every month, I pay no interest on that “debt”. And while that money is floating, it’s in a 4.5% high yield savings account (Sallie Mae).

In the former situation, I am losing money. In the later, I’m making money. (Compared to paying with cash / debit).

Some anecdotes from this year:

I attempted to use LetsRoam over a year ago. It was a spectacular failure and offered no value. Cancelled and all was well. Over a year later they started charging me two monthly fees for who knows what reason. I called them, they bumbled around, and referred it asynchronously to some other department. I’m three months into these mysterious charges. All have been clawed back.

I tried educative.io and frequently encountered non-sense that was objectively, demonstrably false being presented with high confidence. I asked for a refund, and they said they don’t do that. I wasn’t really asking…

I paid a $2k deposit for a Harley that the dealer didn’t have in hand yet. There were unreasonable delays (I suspect they sold the bike to someone else for more), and the dealer’s policy was to not refund the deposit, but to only allow me to apply it to another motorcycle. Guess who else has policies. Because of the amount and timeframe, this was a little more involved, but still only took 15 minutes of my time.

I paid to park, but it appeared to fail. So, I tried again. I was doubled billed. Idk who I’d contact to request a refund. So, dispute it is.

I open my banks app, click dispute, and am refunded. It’s saved me untold hours of dealing with incompetence and/or maliciousness.

I simply don’t deal with this BS. I behave ethically (as best as one can judge that for themselves), but as soon as I hit abusive commercial sociopathy, I disengage. As far as I’m concerned, Visa / Chase are earning their 3%.

A good start would be focusing on what it is, rather than what you did.

This seems both obvious and difficult to prevent.

If you’re curious, Four’s description is “Shop Now, Pay Later.”

I, for instance, would love a minimalistic, self driving, electric car that just works. With wireless charging - no cables. That I can just hop in, say “Hey Siri, take me to target,” and it announces the current weather in Taipei; provided by the Weather Channel.

Here’s a guy kissing nuclear waste. It’s a bit tongue in cheek on the surface, but he’s PhD and there is quality information in the video.

https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU?si=wE0FvscMgBpLUZ0g

I have a 3d printer because I wanted to play with a 3d printer. Same with a drone, zero-turn lawn mower, welding machine, oscilloscope, and a host of other things my wife would be more than happy to tell you about.

Most of us here are engineers of one sort or another. We tend to have disposable income and a predisposition for gadgets.

I doubt many of us are truly ever under the delusion that we need these things.