There is a famous scene at the end of WarGames, which just so happens to be one of my favorite movies. A computer program named Joshua has finally figured out that there is no scenario in which any country can win a global thermonuclear war. Every time it runs a simulation involving nukes, the only result is unimaginable suffering and a stalemate, like a horrifying game of Tic-Tac-Toe.

This leads Joshua to utter the famous words, “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

This lesson can be applied in many ways. I will liken it to our financial system.

Playing the Credit Game

When I was a young man, I heard that having a good credit score was important. It would help me with many aspects of life, such as buying a home. I saw that as a far-off-future goal, but I took steps early on that served me well, such as getting a credit card and paying its balance off every month. Because of that, I’ve never paid a penny in interest on a credit card. Which makes me a deadbeat in the eyes of credit-card companies. They make their real money by charging interest, so I wasn’t much help to them.

I also disciplined my spending and was careful not to spend excessively on frivolities. When I had to take out a student loan at the end of my time in college, I made sure to pay it back a year after I graduated. The one time I got a car loan, I paid it in full a month later. All of this resulted in me having a near-perfect credit score for many years.

However, two years ago I paid off my mortgage 21 years early, and I canceled my only credit card six years ago. So I now have nothing on my credit report except a handful of closed accounts with perfect records of repayment. Thus, I’m worse than a deadbeat. I’m invisible.

By the way, I did all of this while never earning more than the national median annual salary. I just want to make it clear that I’m not extremely rich by any stretch of the imagination. I’m just a regular guy who saves more money than he spends.

Opportunities to Get Back in Debt

I’ve had plenty of opportunities to go into debt since I paid off my mortgage. A nice lady at Costco recently asked if I wanted to get a store credit card, and she had persuasive arguments. I could get money back and a few other perks. But I had to politely decline, noting that her arguments all hid the real motive of Costco to offer that credit card to me. They want me to spend more money.

When I get rewarded for spending with a credit card, I am tempted to spend more than I would normally do with a debit card or cash. Even if I am strong enough to resist that temptation and pay off the balance in full each month, I get a small pittance of a reward that is paid for by all of the people who are not so disciplined.

Credit cards, to me, are traps and pitfalls designed to hurt me. There’s no way for me to win by playing that game with businesspeople who are much smarter than me. The best I can hope for is a stalemate.

Buy Now, Pay Later

The same is true of a solar-panel salesman from my local power company who recently gave me an excellent sales pitch. I purchased some solar panels for my house with cash several years ago, and now he wants me to purchase batteries to go along with them.

But the way the salesman went about selling the batteries was all wrong. He showed me the numbers, emphasizing the low monthly payment I’d have to make for 20 years, which was comparable to a monthly power bill. However, I only looked at the top number, before any rebates or tax write-offs. What did I need to pay today to get the batteries installed? And that price was too high, so I said no thank you.

Why wouldn’t I take a low monthly payment when I could pay the whole balance off early without a penalty? Because the entire idea of “buy now, pay later” is repugnant to me. It gives me the false belief that I have more money than I actually do because I don’t have to part with the cash immediately. Plus, making an exception in this one case would justify me in making more exceptions until they became the rule. Then the debt would stay with me like a noose around my neck for the next 20 years, siphoning off interest from me that I could have saved and put toward better purposes.

Yes, I had to do that when I bought my house, but I never want to do it again. Perhaps that’s the luxury of living beneath my means and getting out of debt. But it’s worth it to me to stay away from schemes like this, no matter how slickly they’re packaged and sold.

Mastering the Game and Walking Away

I understand that credit is necessary to use when it comes to making a huge purchase, like buying a house. But now that I’ve paid that off, I have no more need for a credit score. All that measured was my ability to pay off debt. It’s moot now since I never plan to go into debt again. Credit is a game I don’t play anymore because I finally grew up.

Like Joshua realizing the truth about world conflict, I have realized that credit is a young man’s game where there are vanishingly few winners and heaps of losers. At some point, the only winning move is not to play. Unfortunately, few understand that because to get to the point where you don’t have to play anymore, you have to master the game. And no one wants to walk away from something they’ve gotten really good at.

I am able to walk away from this game I have played so well because I only ever saw it as a means to an end. My sole goal was to reach a day when I would be debt-free, owning my house free and clear and having the ability to save money for my children’s future and a comfortable retirement for my wife and me.

I’ll stick with a nice game of chess from now on.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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