Plastic "surgery."

I'd intended to blog this morning about my frustrating night at tutoring, but discovered this morning that my credit card number has been compromised. I use only one card for virtually everything (gotta get those United miles!) and have many recurrent transactions billed automatically to this number. So I've spent my entire morning calling the cable company, land-line and cell phone providers, dry cleaners, health club, Starbucks, and too darn many other companies to alert them to the problem.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something. When this happened to me a few years ago while I was traveling in Asia, it took months to clear up all the detritus of the fraud. Fortunately, my credit card company caught the problem quickly, and there will be no financial consequences to me, but this is one pain in the tushie I did not need.

I'm going to try not to use any of my other cards until I get the new mileage visa next week. I seriously doubt, however, that I'll be able to manage. Especially since I've been walking around with about $3.00 in cash in my wallet for the past month. But maybe this experience will at least help me focus on how much unnecessary spending I do because of the convenience of plastic, and will force me to think twice before tossing around my limited funds. I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but I am trying this year to save my shekels for more important uses . . . .