How could this be crazy spending when everyone else was doing the same thing? 

I was balancing a dozen credit cards, but to me the charges were just numbers on a screen that I figured I’d pay off at some point in the future. Meanwhile, I could keep doing minimums and living up to standard. And besides, how could this be crazy spending when everyone else was doing the same thing? 

I

grew up in Lakewood, though I didn’t have a typical background. Through a more circuitous route than most, I made my way to Jerusalem to study. There, I met my wife Rena, an American like me, and soon we got married. Those were halcyon days; I walked the sunlit streets on a high. My wife and I were making our own life and home.

I sometimes think of the young man I was, looking the same as the rest, coasting the Jerusalem streets. What did he know about making it in the real world or what it took to get by? Rena and I weren’t being supported by our parents, and we didn’t have much of a plan — but I had to pay rent and I had to buy food. When one of the guys at shul approached me with an idea, I was all ears.

“You can make money selling airline points,” he said. “The more you swipe your credit card, the more points you earn — and there are people who need others to swipe for them. You do it, they pay you back in cash — it’s a win-win.”

I leaned back against the seforim shrank. “Why do they need me exactly?”

These people want to amass stock of a certain product and get it cheap, he explained to me. But often, with things like electronics, the per customer sales are limited, so they recruit a lot of people to place orders for them. They get a lot of stock for a great price, and they sell it later for profit.

“For you, it just means swiping your card and getting cash back,” he said.

It sounded good: cash for swiping, plus points and bonuses. I knew I’d be accruing credit card debt, but I assured myself it wouldn’t need to be paid back for a long time.

“You want to be sure to make minimum payments,” my friend cautioned. “Even just doing that builds your credit record. Then you can get a larger limit — and also more cards.”

As we walked out of shul, I pulled out my wallet to show him my card. It had a low credit limit, but apparently applying for another was shockingly easy. The company wanted my name, Social Security number, and earnings, which meant I had to inflate the numbers. Soon enough, I got my second card.