Slice of Chaotic Life

After the months of renting two houses, after the expenses of moving, the large deposit, the furniture and curtains etc, I had debt both on my credit card and my day-to-day account. (The literal translation would be wage account, but I think it is common in English to call them checking accounts or some such. I haven’t seen checks for a couple decades here in Norway, we are more advanced when it comes to economics, but it is a form of transactional account.) In Norway, this type of account usually has a symbolic positive interest on deposits, and a much higher negative interest on loans, if available at all (as it frequently is, within limits). The interest on loan / overdraft is comparable to a credit card.

I use Skandiabanken, which is a pure Net bank and offers more favorable conditions than other banks, but a somewhat narrower spectrum of services. Probably not available outside of Scandinavia.

Anyway, I decided to accept some degree of debt and just go on with my life, not making any big lifestyle changes, just paying a quite modest amount to my credit card account each month regardless of whether and how much I had actually used the credit card. In the months with less tax deduction, I would pay off significantly more. Being single and with only small debt, I pay a noticeable amount of tax. Of course, in Norway taxes also include various mandatory insurances, both health insurance and pensions savings, so the actual tax part is not horrifying, not at my income level at least. The sales tax is somewhat horrifying, but you don’t pay that on rent. Don’t let the government know I said that! They will probably start wondering why they didn’t think of that.

Anyway, I decided to just enlist time in my service, and go on with my life. And so I did. Last month I realized that even after paying off the rest of my credit card debt, I still had more money than I needed to pay my bills. It’s been a while since last time. That’s when I bought the Galaxy Note, a dubious thing to do but pretty typical of me. I tend to buy things I don’t need if I want there to be more of them in the world of the future. Kind of voting with my wallet, if you will. But the wallet has not been exactly fit for voting in this way for a while.

Well, evidently this month again there is money sloshing around, despite the Note and the unexpected dentist visit. So that is nice. It is a shame I can’t continue to pay that same amount into my credit card account when I don’t have debt there. I really should find some way to continue to push it out of my transaction account. Seeing money there is likely to confuse me and may cause purchases. We don’t really want too much of that. What we really want is to save up for the next moving expenses. With the asylum seeker upstairs now talking very loudly and dragging things around after midnight, moving may become an increasingly tempting option.