Consumer Reports has a blog post on a credit card bill that recently passed the U.S. Senate. The bill needs to be reconciled with a slightly-different version that already passed the House, and then it will go to President Obama.

It took me about three minutes to get all het up.

The major provisions of the bill are as follows:

• Interest rates can’t be raised during the first year of an account
• Customers will be notified 45 days in advance of any change in interest rates
• Bills can be paid online or over the phone without incurring a processing fee
• Customers must be over 60 days late on payments before their interest rate can be raised on balances; if the rate is raised, it will go back to the lower rate if customers make the minimum payment on time for six months in a row.
• Overlimit fees can’t be charged unless cardholders are told that the purchase will put them over their limit and they authorize it to go through anyway
• If your card has more than one interest rate on balances, then payments must be applied to the highest interest rate first
• Gift cards can’t expire for five years, and issuers can’t charge dormancy fees for unused amounts left on the card
• Credit card statements must be mailed out 21 days before they’re due
• Individuals under 21 will need a co-signer on their cards unless they can prove that they have the means to make payments on their own
• Credit card agreements will have to be posted on the internet

Someone in the comments linked to a story on the credit card industry’s likely response to the legislation.

Credit cards have long been a very good deal for people who pay their bills on time and in full. Even as card companies imposed punitive fees and penalties on those late with their payments, the best customers racked up cash-back rewards, frequent-flier miles and other perks in recent years.

Now Congress is moving to limit the penalties on riskier borrowers, who have become a prime source of billions of dollars in fee revenue for the industry. And to make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

So that’s not the part I’m het up about. I’m het up about the rest of the comments on that Consumer Reports post.

People commented about being penalized for being responsible. You’ve been benefiting from other people’s irresponsibility for years! The credit card companies are making enough money off of the “bad” people that they can afford to give you an easier ride. You are not entitled to frequent flyer miles and cashback bonuses.

You know what else? You don’t have to use a credit card. Spend cash. Use your debit card. Go back to writing checks. Really want to make a statement? Stick it to the credit card companies and stop using their product all together. If you’re as diligent and responsible as you say you are, this should not be a problem for you. Take your freedom of choice and your financial independence and do something different if you really don’t like it. Besides, if you pay off your bill every month, your interest rate shouldn’t matter that much anyway.

Suggesting that people learn to be more responsible with their credit is not helpful. That’s a separate issue. What this legislation does is create some transparency. Seriously, why is it wrong for anyone – good credit or bad – to get a heads up on an impending rate hike? What this legislation does is prevent credit card companies from making it more difficult for people who are already in trouble and trying to get out of it to make that climb out of the hole. What this legislation does is curb intentionally deceptive practices.

Anybody who’s been reading along with me for at least the last year knows I’ve struggled with credit card debt. I finally paid all that shit off a couple months ago and I’m less than a year away from paying off my car loan and being completely debt-free (on a technicality, since I don’t own our house). I don’t need to go on about American society’s culture of debt and credit and why we think we should have or need to have credit cards. Y’all know what I’m talking about.

So anyway.

I adjust my financial goals as I achieve them. As I move towards greater independence, maybe I need to rethink not just what I spend my money on, but how my cash actually flows. I now charge most things to one card and pay it off every month. I track my spending obsessively, so I always know exactly how much that bill is gonna be and I budget accordingly. But there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t pay cash for everything. None whatsoever. I can’t fathom what I’d possibly buy at this point in time that I do not currently have enough cash for. (Emergencies are another thing, but that’s not what this is about.)

This current state of cash flow redistribution makes me twitch. I like to know exactly how much is going where and on what day, far in advance. But I think I’ll ultimately have more peace of mind if I transition away from always charging things to paying cash for them. I think it would be healthy for me to learn to obsess a little less. Along those lines, when I say “pay cash” I mean “pay cash” and not “use my debit card.” Constantly using my debit card means I have to constantly recalculate my balances because I’m totally OCD about it. So when I have no green in my pocket, I’m done for the week.

That’s my new plan. We’ll see how that works.

Related posts:

1. MBNA America can eat shit and die.
2. The Credit Card Bill of Rights and my Discover Card
3. I want to like you, Mint. I really do.
4. The Financial Geniuses I Work With
5. Money Talk