The Tribune

If you ever want to waste a morning, try to cancel a credit card. In life, there are challenges and then there is the challenge of unwanting and ditching, whether online or by phone, a four-inch plastic card that holds the power of purchasing anything you want with an insertion, swipe or scan.

Pay no mind to the baseless blabber about how important it is to manage your finances carefully, to save, limit your debt or balance your budget. The banking system, inclusive of the fee-hungry card provider, is clearly rigged against any and every meagre attempt at prudent management of your personal financial affairs. If the fee-addicted really had your interest at heart (as opposed to the interest you pay) they would have created one online option, just one, to kiss that piece of plastic goodbye. Instead, they give you dozens of others that let you increase your limit, add users who have a right to spend on your behalf, run up a charge for taking a cash advance and more. But look for a line to click on the online form that says cancel and you might as well order a conch salad in Slovakia.

How do I know how much easier it is to get a card than to cancel one? Because I’ve done both. And the former outweighed the latter in ease of doing business by 100 to1, both by phone and online.

It’s not just in The Bahamas. It’s no wonder more than 189 million Americans – or 128 million households – carry more than $13.5 trillion in debt including mortgages, car loans, student loans and credit cards. How do you escape when every time you buy a stick of gum or lumber, the sweet cashier rushes to inform you that you can save 10 percent on today’s purchase if you just take a minute to fill out the form to get a Target, Home Depot, Harbour Freight, Bass Pro Shop or Macy’s card.

Explain you do not live in the US and you would not qualify and she says it doesn’t matter. How can it not matter? Would you offer credit to someone who is about to fade into the remote sun-drenched Tropic of Cancer, never to file a tax return and has no way to prove their income or any intent to repay?

Getting a card is so easy that in the US, millennials - who don’t instantly remember the number of World Wars we’ve had - manage to qualify for an average of three cards per person. Average debt per person under 35 in the States is just over $5,800. No wonder there is a whole foundation dedicated to credit counselling. Debt has destroyed marriages, lives and contributed to a nation of card-carrying zombie-shopaholics.

If there is a serious side aside from the stress it must cause the conscientious, it is how the system is geared to make getting in so much easier than getting out.

On one site under a category mistakenly dubbed Help & Support, you can do everything but cancel a card even though you have a zero balance and cancel is all you want to do. You can request a balance transfer, arrange direct deposit from your credit card, add an authorized user, activate card, manage PIN, request a credit line increase, set travel notice, view or edit overdraft protection, dispute a transaction, check dispute status, request your agreement, view paperless settings, print statements, order a paper statement, order access check copies request a credit reference letter, view account fee. You get the point. Every option but goodbye. Maybe credit card facilities, which are really revolving small loans with high interest rates, should come with a separation agreement and when it’s over, baby, it’s just over.

Though it’s really no one’s business, I endured this process on behalf of a close relative and it was a real eye-opener. I now know better. Laugh if you want. I am an AmEx fan and have been ever since BOB introduced the Platinum card with tennis star Mark Knowles – back in the spotlight again – as the brand. I pay it off in full every month. No interest. No penalty. No pain.

Then again, I haven’t tried to cancel it yet.

Brothers who grew up with Lover’s Lane as their backyard

In last week’s column, we asked who dreamed up the idea of naming a street that ran between a cemetery and a rectory Lover’s Lane?

It was one of those rhetorical questions like why is the Moon called full instead of fat. We didn’t really expect an answer. Lo and behold, we got a hand-delivered letter - an incredible rarity in this land devoid of post.

In it were photos of young brothers John and Stephen Knowles who grew up with Lover’s Lane as their personal backyard and the St Matthew’s Church, Shirley Street, yard their playground. “The Old Rectory”.

Stephen wrote: “Where I was taken after I was born at the General Hospital (now known as Princess Margaret) was my home for my first two or three years until my father built the new Rectory down the hill where I grew up.”

The man who let his boys run free in those days of innocence was Donald R Knowles. Posted in Acklins, Andros, Eleuthera, he spent the last 15 years of his active religious service as head of St Matthew’s, the beautiful work of architecture that graces the broad intersection of Shirley and Church Streets. Later, he became the first native Bahamian bishop of the Anglican Diocese and one of his other sons, Donald, Jr, became the first principal of the College of The Bahamas.

Next to the Rectory and what was part of the complex at the time is now Genesis Academy. As for The Rectory, it became a seminary for nuns and those days of playing free aside Lover’s Lane – they became a memory worth sharing.