In my last diary I touched on something that bugged me: everyone assumes you have credit cards. Everyone assumes that if you really, really need money, you can come up with it "somehow".
Even good people make that assumption, and it is wrong, wrong, wrong.
When our insurance rep was going over our new plan with us, one of the things she mentioned was that we wouldn't get our insurance cards for a couple of weeks because my employer waited until the last minute to pick the new plan. For medical visits and hospitals, it's no problem, because we can give our plan name and SSN to the billing department and they can look up our plan (remember when you weren't supposed to give your SSN to anyone but the government?).
The problem was prescription drug cards. Apparently this lookup process won't work there, and as everyone knows, drug costs are exorbitant. After the usual cost-saving spiel (always get generic, etc) she said "If all else fails, we all have charge cards, just charge it and we'll reimburse you."
I chuckled when I heard that statement, the sort of "heh" I use when something that isn't very funny has never-the-less amused me. You see, I don't have a credit card. From some of the expressions in the room, it's obvious I'm not the only one.
The office manager here also handles the basic insurance-related questions. She's a nice lady. Good people. But she doesn't understand. When I asked her about what information I'd need to go to the doctor, she told me, and followed it up with "But if there's a problem, just put it on a credit card and we'll reimburse you." The assumption is there: everyone has credit cards.
To me, credit cards are something that well-off people have. If I had a credit card, I wouldn't have any financial problems, because I'd have a buffer. I wouldn't have to worry about when a particular bill payment went out and whether or not I'd have a paycheck to cover it with, because I'd be able to put it on the credit card and just pay it at the end of the month.
I'd be able to charge my prescriptions, if I had them, and have the insurance company reimburse me.
But I don't have a credit card. I can't get one, and I've stopped trying.* I have a check card, which is useful. I also have a "secured" card, where I pay the bank an annual fee to lend me my own money at punitive interest. That's what you're supposed to do to rebuild your credit, but it's not working and it feels like a scam. I am going to close it quite soon and get my $500 back.
But an actual credit card, something with a limit in the 4-digit range? I can't even conceive of having that kind of comfort or spending power at my disposal. How can anyone with that kind of safety net ever have a cash-flow problem in their day-to-day expenses? I used to hear ads on the radio all the time asking bizarre questions like "Do you have more than $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 in credit card debt?" How does that even happen?
Good people, the people who can afford to donate to charity and do so, don't understand that some people can't get credit cards. There is a "let them eat cake"-level disconnect between even these finely-graded levels of "middle class". And I am so much better off than many people I know, people who don't have jobs at all, or insurance, who live in the street and have died on their way to the ER for lack of asthma medication Medicare wouldn't provide them with.
How did this level of disconnect, this reality gap between even the closest of economic levels happen? How do we fix it?
* For the curious, I made a mistake and missed 2 car payments 5 years ago and GMACFS (now Ally) repossessed my car. No phone calls, no letters, just a embarrassed-looking guy at my door saying "Hi, I'm here for the Malibu." So, with the help of my family, I was able to scrape together the 2 missing payments and the punitive fees (which amounted to double the missed payments), drive 250 miles and get my car back, but it shows on my credit history as a "60 day late payment". In addition, when I finished paying off the loan a year ago, it was closed "with repossession". I have challenged this with every credit bureau and been told that status is correct, because despite finishing the loan without another late payment, the repo means that the status is forever "closed with repossession". And, of course, since I only paid it off last year, that status will remain on my credit report for another 6 years, despite the fact that the actual repossession was more than 5 years ago. Every credit card I've ever applied for since is declined because of a "bankruptcy or repossession in your credit history".
Wed Jan 11, 2012 at 8:46 AM PT: I wander off for a day and now I'm in Community Spotlight! Thanks!
Just to clarify, I'm well aware of the pitfalls of credit cards. I did have a Sears Mastercard with a $1000 limit a very long time ago, which I eventually paid off and canceled after finding it more trouble than it was worth. I make more money now than I did then, but everyday expenses and especially medical expenses have gone up so steeply that I actually have less to live on now. As others have mentioned in the comments, a single random expense can completely blow my budget out of the water for months at a time. My cash buffer (and I did have one!) was completely eaten by medical deductibles in the past year; some details of that story are mentioned in one of my earlier diaries.
Thanks for all the recs and comments! It's good to know my problems are shared by others and are not just some personal moral failing, as the world would have me believe.