Lessons for Living

Don’t Use Your Debit Card There

unless you want fewer consumer protections -- #creditcards --

It’s too easy to use my debit card as I would my credit card, so this is a good reminder warning:

Sometimes reaching for your wallet is like a multiple choice test: How do you really want to pay?

While credit cards and debit cards may look almost identical, not all plastic is the same.

“It’s important that consumers understand the difference between a debit card and a credit card,” says John Breyault, director of the Fraud Center for the National Consumers League, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. “There’s a difference in how the transactions are processed and the protections offered to consumers when they use them.”

While debit cards and credit cards each have advantages, each is also better suited to certain situations. And since a debit card is a direct line to your bank account, there are places where it can be wise to avoid handing it over — if for no other reason than complete peace of mind.

Here are the “ten” places the article goes on to expand on:

  1. Online
  2. Big-Ticket Items
  3. Deposit Required
  4. Restaurants
  5. You’re a New Customer
  6. Buy Now, Take Delivery Later
  7. Recurring Payments
  8. Future Travel
  9. Gas Stations and Hotels
  10. Checkouts or ATMs That Look “Off”

Source: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

I Don’t Deserve It!

It’s so easy to feel that way. And believe that way also.

“What did I do to deserve this?!” is our cry sometimes.

Perhaps I need to adjust my perspective.

No. Not perhaps. I do!

So let me try my hand at it….

  • I don’t deserve this; what I deserve is far worse!
  • What have I done to not deserve this?
  • I remember that time I didn’t get what I deserved. And that time. And that time. And….

So there you are.

But I still have a hard time (sometimes) thinking I don’t deserve this. 🙄

(What is this? Never mind. Just remember the lesson.)

That aside, how about five photos? I took them yesterday and today. Read it all

Have or Have Not?

Wow! I’ve been hanging on to this for a long time. Ever since January 27! 😯

The day before I’d seen this entry in our Light for the Day flip calendar:

A wise man does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for the things which he has.

Well, the morning of the 27th Ruby called my attention to two devotional entries she’d read in My Utmost for His Highest.

So I found them online for my quoting convenience and your reading convenience.

First, from January 26:

Look Again and Consecrate

If God so clothes the grass of the field . . . , will He not much more clothe you . . . ? —Matthew 6:30

A simple statement of Jesus is always a puzzle to us because we will not be simple. How can we maintain the simplicity of Jesus so that we may understand Him? By receiving His Spirit, recognizing and relying on Him, and obeying Him as He brings us the truth of His Word, life will become amazingly simple. Jesus asks us to consider that “if God so clothes the grass of the field . . .” how “much more” will He clothe you, if you keep your relationship right with Him? Every time we lose ground in our fellowship with God, it is because we have disrespectfully thought that we knew better than Jesus Christ. We have allowed “the cares of this world” to enter in (Matthew 13:22), while forgetting the “much more” of our heavenly Father.

[the rest of it]

Then the entry for January 27: Read it all

Got Bias?

If you’re asking me, sure. I’ve got plenty of it. And you can assume that when you read here at my blog.

Timothy Egan, one of the Opinionators over at the New York Times, also has bias:

From out of the ordered suburbs of Idaho to the grim chaos of Haiti came 40-year-old Laura Silsby — fleeing creditors who had foreclosed on her home and ex-employees stiffed of their wages.

To the Caribbean she went with nine other self-appointed missionaries and an audacious plan: they would “gather 100 orphans from the streets,” of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, according to an outline on the Web site of Silsby’s group, New Life Children’s Refuge.

The children would be whisked across the border into the Dominican Republic. Food, shelter, legal permits: the basics would be worked out by divine blueprint. For now, they needed funds — tax deductible!

Source: The Missionary Impulse – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com

Wow! 😯

I don’t know if Timothy Egan admits to his bias, but just in case, I’ll admit him to it for him. (Or something like that.) 😆

I imagine you have your biases as well. And I’m sure WorldNet Daily does as well, so I’ll offer this piece of theirs as partial counterbalance to Timothy Egan:

Her foibles and frailties notwithstanding, Laura Silsby – backed by the Rev. Clint Henry and his 500-member, Idaho-based, Baptist Church – is probably the best thing that’ll ever happen to these waifs.

Whatever were Sillby’s plans for the children, these were far and away better than what’s in store for them if they remain at home.

Well, opinion pieces aside, here’s a news piece from the BBC (which we hope is unbiased, but not with a lot of hope): Haiti poised to free last two American missionaries

A judge in Haiti has said the last two Christian US missionaries being held on suspicion of abducting children after the earthquake may be freed in days.

Bernard Sainvil told Reuters the case, which involves 33 children, should be closed this week because there were no criminal grounds to pursue it.

“No criminal grounds” — so how will Timothy Egan deal with that?

I don’t plan to try to find out.

Hopefully Laura Silsby will get her creditor and employee woes ironed out.

More importantly, though, hopefully the Haiti children will get the help and opportunity and love and homes they need.

Maybe Christian Aid Ministries will help in that.

Oh, wait. I should say that hauling children not your own across international boundaries is a really dumb thing to do if you don’t have all your authorization ducks quacking in a row. That goes for Mark Roth, Timothy Egan, Laura Silsby, Bernard Sainvil, Bernard Sain-Vil, and/or Christian Aid Ministries.

Green Tea Creativity

Do you know how to write creatively?

Here are some examples of non-dull writing.

Drink a few cups of green tea and you could avoid dentists drills and bills.

Fortunately, a few cups of green tea may bring him back so he can help you avoid diabetes — or at least fend off its complications.

Drinking green tea isn’t like putting a bodyguard between you and skin cancer — it’s like having a whole team of them.

Those who drank at least two cups of green tea every day had the lowest risk of losing their memory and thinking ability.

Green tea turned 20 percent of drug-resistant superbugs into helpless wimps…. The same bacteria that had virtually ignored antibiotics before were easily wiped out by a combination of antibiotics and green tea.

A compound found in soothing green tea could be the key to reducing inflammation, joint damage, and more.

Don’t believe everything you read. A 2006 study found that drinking green tea makes no difference in your risk of prostate cancer — yet, a newer study disagrees. This study suggested that green tea may not prevent all prostate cancers, but it may cut your odds of advanced or life-threatening cancer by half.

Make lemon your main squeeze when you drink tea and you may get four times as many health-building compounds from your tea.

The Kitchen Table Book

The Kitchen Table Book tells me so.

I’ve been drinking green tea for quite a while (it seems like). But not enough. Time to ramp it up, folks! And add lemon juice as well. This is exciting stuff!

Please note: No cynics or mockers were hurt in the production of this post. I reject responsibility for what happens to them if they read it.

Dear Credit Card User

For more than a week I’ve been planning to write to you about your credit cards.

Now I just read that Changes to credit card rules won’t perfectly protect consumers. The writer makes some of the same points I was planning to make, though mine are based on personal experience and not on research of the new laws.

Another change generally keeps lenders from raising interest rates on existing balances, though you still could see rates go up on new purchases, provided they send a warning of the change.

Consumers received a taste of this desperation in the last few months. Knowing that by Feb. 22 their interest income would be reduced, lenders raised rates, changed credit limits and dropped many customers.

Even people who paid on time were shocked by the changes lenders used to cut their risks and enhance revenue.

Now comes Phase 2. Analysts expect consumers to be hit with new fees, such as annual fees for holding credit cards and penalties for rarely or never using cards.

The law requires that people be notified clearly of changes, but many people ignore their mail.

“…lenders raised rates, changed credit limits and dropped many customers,”” she wrote.

Some of them certainly did for me!

A couple raised their rates.

Another dropped credit limits because of card inactivity. (That reduction was in the range of $10K.)

Yet another simply closed a had-not-been-used-in-a-long-time business card.

And all of the above were utterly unexpected. And none of the actions were because of some recent bad activity of mine. The card holders were just getting ready for the new law to go into effect.

Interestingly, though, Discover Card treated me quite differently on a personal card. First of all, they slashed my interest rate. And did so retroactively by a month or so. (I called them to ask for a reduction.) Thank you, Discover! You guys have been nice to me before; I appreciate that.

Above all, love God!