Pulling an Enron

Every day, regular people like you and me commit Enrons.

What exactly is committing or pulling an Enron? I define it as moving your debt around to make it look like you are not as broke or not in as much debt as you really are.

How do you pull an Enron? You transfer the balance from one credit card to another, always shifting the debt around to the credit card with the no interest or low interest rate. Eventually you have to pay some significant amount of money or transfer the debt again. But until that time you do your best just to keep the interest collecting on your debt as low as possible.

The responsible people that commit Enrons don't accumulate more debt by spending on the credit cards they just paid off with balance transferring. The bad Enron-doers will do the exact opposite and end up in even more debt and more interest to pay than what they started with.

I committed yet another Enron today. For months I have been moving my debt around but I'm being responsible and not spending on those now cleared credit cards and since I have less credit cards to make payments on, I make bigger payments to the few I have (sorry, I'm not at the point where I can pay my balances in full at the end of each billing cycle). But one of the credit cards I "paid off" made me a sweet offer. No interest for 12 months on a balance transfer. So what did I do? I transferred the balance from my Macy's store charge because the interest rate was 26%.

I'm saving on interest but I'm not really saving on the amount of credit card bills I have to pay each month. I essentially just swapped the debt. But if I'm consistent in my game plan to get out of debt the one I transferred the debt too will be paid off long before they can start charging me interest.