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"Every Monday, Mary offers no-nonsense advice to help you save more cash and climb out of debt. And you&amp;#039;ll laugh out loud when she takes companies to task for deceptive practices or new money-wasting ideas. I&amp;#039;ve heard of blaming one&amp;#039;s weight on a lot of things, but credit and debit cards? That&amp;#039;s a new one for me, and a theory recently reported at Bankrate.com. But when considered it carefully, the idea does seem to carry a lot of weight. Now that fast-food restaurants all across the country are accepting credit and debit cards for payment, what was quite convenient has now become ultra-convenient. Let us not forget the commercial that shows the fast-food joint humming like a well-oiled machine at lunchtime with all the patrons merrily swiping their Visa Check Cards until some rude individual has the audacity to stop the momentum by attempting to pay with\u2026CASH! The message, I believe, is that cash is slow, old-fashioned and not very cool. But swiping plastic is simple, fast and far superior. Clearly, we Americans have bought into that theory in a big way. Bankrate reports that you will spend 30 percent more if you pay with plastic. It&amp;#039;s human nature. Plastic is a stand-in for money. It&amp;#039;s not the real thing, so we don&amp;#039;t treat it with the seriousness we do currency. To wit, the fast-food restaurant. It&amp;#039;s a pain to dig in your pocket for five or six bucks to pay for a quick lunch. But swiping a card? Easy. In fact, you don&amp;#039;t even have to pay that close attention to the tab. Who cares if it&amp;#039;s $5 or $7 when you just have to swipe? And according to the article, when paying with plastic we&amp;#039;re more apt to just go ahead and supersize this combo\u2014oh, and how about throwing in an apple turnover, too? After all, you don&amp;#039;t have to worry about the total as it magically disappears into the whole process of paying with plastic. And that&amp;#039;s where the weight thing kicks in. You know, I think this theory does have merit\u2014if you&amp;#039;re buying more, you&amp;#039;re probably eating more, right? And I&amp;#039;ll bet that it translates to grocery shopping and eating in fancy restaurants, too. Not long ago, I was the guest of one of my readers who just happens to own one of the highest-rated restaurants in America\u2014Tavern on the Green in New York. Yes, lucky me. I&amp;#039;m certain that I ate more than I should have, because I had this sense that I could order with abandon. I was a guest. I accepted such a generous gift with great enthusiasm! Now, had I been the one paying the tab I have a feeling I might have been a bit more, shall we say, discriminating with what I ordered. But I had the same sense of freedom I might have had if I&amp;#039;d been planning to pay with plastic rather than cold, hard cash. I highly recommend that my readers who are struggling to live below their means go on an all-cash diet. And now I can promise them a fringe benefit that is bound to delight: Not only will you lose debt, chances are great you&amp;#039;ll lose weight, too!-Mary Hunt Have you ever considered the correlation between paying with plastic and extra poundage? Source: Credit Cards Can Make You Fat "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/a40631/will-paying-plastic-make-you-pack-on-pounds-6585/>