How would you like to attend a funeral for the death of your credit cards? That was my goal in 2002, when I faced $26,000 in credit card debt. I’d fallen victim to the lure of fake ownership and the do-it-now-pay-later trap! I’d been having real financial difficulty because my sister was ill and I falsely looked at my credit cards as income, hoping she’d get better and we’d be back in business! I wrote all about it in The GOOD Book.
It was during that time that I got real familiar with the “voice” behind my spending behavior. If you are suffering from credit card debt, how old have you been acting to be in the predicament you’re in? I discovered I was nine years old!
Please Attend an Official Credit Card Funeral
I actually had a funeral for my credit cards because I mourned their death and I wanted closure. They’d become friends that paid me when I didn’t have the money to get what I wanted. Flylady attended, joined by her husband, Robert, who is a real judge and who officiated. So not only did I get the funeral, it was official! And there’s more!
My husband videotaped it! I decided at the time, I should open the funeral up to other mourners and allow them to officially bury their credit cards and the rest is not only entertaining and enlightening and it’s history!
When I got the idea to have the funeral, I got so excited that I decided to place a notice in the obituaries of our local newspaper, The Columbian. They wouldn’t let me put it in the actual obituary column, but I was able to have it printed in the “Personals.” I’ll tell you what it said, but first I want to tell you some behind the scene goodies.
Robert made a beautiful mahogany casket for the burial.(Wait until you see it in the video below!) He’s a master woodworker among many other talents. (Robert is Mr. Google! You can ask him almost anything and he’ll know a lot about the subject, not in a smarty pants way, just in good solid reliable information.) The casket was about the size of a shoe box for Tom Brady’s football shoes. It was lined in velvet and so beautiful in craftsmanship. (To this day I wish I’d been able to go back to the vacant lot we buried it in and dig it up, not to get at all the mutilated cards that are in there, but for that incredible piece of furniture Robert made.)
The funeral was held at a church which was situated on about 50 acres. It was also a retreat facility and many of my guests stayed on the grounds. We had the burial (as you’ll see on the video) a ways out from the church and in a meadow. Since the funeral, that church fell to scandal and is now a scary abandoned and vandalized property. I still would love to get that casket back, but now it’s just a fanciful dream.
I hope you enjoy watching the funeral and I hope it inspires you to cut up all your credit cards, unless of course you pay them off each month.
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Here is the actual notice I placed in our local paper.
Note: As you can see, the telephone number was an active number of mine and no one called!
Love,
P.S. If you are struggling with your finances I suggest reading The GOOD Book: Get Out Of Debt.
