January 8: Credit Where Credit is Due

I knew when I undertook this challenge of doing one new thing every day this year that every "new" event would not be a groundbreaking event. Friday, January 8 was one of those days. In fact, the new thing I tried may seem sort of trivial, probably boring...but, hey, the goal is to try something new, not new and exciting. Anyway, we have a yearly week-long vacation in Sarasota with my in-laws every March, and the biggest obstacle in planning for the trip is when to buy airfare. We've invested in the online service Yapta to keep us up-to-date on the latest fares, and, this year, the question was not as much when to buy but how to fund our purchase. With the changing credit environment and a hike in interest rates, we've been forced to close out credit cards that we would typically use for this particular task. So, with full buy-in from my wife (actually, more like a "yeah, honey, whatever you want to do" response), we decided to apply for a new credit card....but not just any credit card, a Boston Red Sox MasterCard (insert "oohs" and "ahhs" here)! For those of you who know me, you're well familiar with my obsession for Boston baseball. Anyway, in the past, I've always completed such an application using a paper form and the US Postal Service. But, in the spirit of trying something new, this time I applied online. I have to admit a certain degree of apprehension in doing it this way, as I have a strict reluctance to providing my social security number to anyone or anything. So, after putting it off as long as possible, I decided to go for it (had to, I had a blog deadline to meet). Being an associate of Bank of America, I found it difficult to do this through any other bank other than BAC, and, thankfully I followed through with that. As I quickly learned that if you are an existing Bank of America customer AND you use their Online Banking service, you have the option of using an express application. The best part? You don't have to give your soc number via this method. In the end, it was a piece of cake. Just 5 minutes taken from my evening and an instant decision for my card. The verdict? Approved, of course. So now I can show my team support every time I make a new purchase, and, better yet, we can finally get serious about buying our air fare. Groundbreaking? Far from it. But, for my wife and I, one more "to-do" that we can check off our list.