Friday, December 14, 2012

Credit Card Judgment

Whenever we go grocery shopping or errand running, I always let Jordan slide the credit card on the machine.  He loves my wallet, going through all the receipts, taking out all the cards, and of course, he loves playing with the credit card machine.  Buttons, pens, and a sliding option for his cards - what kid wouldn't love that?!

But lately, I've been getting this a lot:

"Oh, teaching him how to use a credit card this early?"
"Bad news, teaching him how to use that early!"
"Uh-oh, someone's learning early how to use a credit card early!"

Very rarely do I get:

"Oh, what a good helper you are!"
"Are you helping Mommy?"

I'm not a person to hold back what I think and yesterday, I had about enough.

We were at JoAnn's when the register woman (who I believe has said different versions of this to me) commented knowingly about what a dangerous habit he was learning early on.

I retorted with, "Yeah, well we also learn how to budget at home."  That shut her up.  I told Jordan he was such a great helper and asked if I could have my card back and he gave it to me without a fight (thanks Jordan, he's learning early how to save Mommy face!).  I know our children learn from us, but it's not like I'm going around spending money we don't have on unnecessary items for leisure.  And along with how to use a credit card, Jordan also has learned many other things from us.  I know she probably didn't mean it in a threatening way, but I had enough of the credit card judgment.  I have always paid all my credit card bills in full, I have only had insufficient funds twice in my life (once in college because I really was broke, and once because I didn't transfer enough of my funds from another account), and I budget like a mad woman.  I know how much we spend on groceries, entertainment, rent, utilities, internet, credit cards, and have done a detailed analysis (with Andy's help) on the best rewards system (we literally sat there and translated airline points to dollars and analyzed the % back on different types of purchases for each card, the max, took into consideration the membership fees, etc.), but obviously I'm not going to spew all of that to every cash register person who tells me I'm being a bad mother for letting my son use the credit card.  *sigh.  One day though, I just might!

I know I should have more charity during this time, but sometimes people just tick me off.  And I wasn't rude, just very matter of fact.  I'll try to be better next time she or someone else says that same thing to me.  You'd think she remember, we are the only Asians here that frequent JoAnn that often (I'm assuming, but...)

1 comment:

Melissa Stringham said...

Reminds me of every single cashier asking if I'm done having kids yet. Maybe they need a course in small talk. So what IS the best cc?