Well here’s an interesting story… I received my property tax appraisal document in the mail this week and thought it was interesting that my home value has been assessed 20k lower than last year.    I certainly don’t mind the lower valuation as it means I’ll be paying less in property taxes but while I received a lower valuation, I also received notice from the city that water & sewer rates would rise over 15 percent.

Worse than the 15% hike is the fact that the city has continuously cut back on picking up garbage.   At the rate the city is cutting services, we’ll have to soon resort to burning garbage in old drums like I remember people doing in my childhood neighborhood over 30 years ago!

Along those lines, I received a letter this week from Chase stating that one of my credit cards would be “upgraded” to the new Slate Chase card provided that I met their new credit worthy standards.   Sorry Chase but I have my own new “Ethical Worthy Standards” and you don’t make the cut.   I closed another Chase account this week and I am now down to one checking account and two credit cards – those will all be gone by June or July if I am able to meet my transfers and schedule for complete severing ties with all big banks.

Many people were talking about the consumer credit dropping in February and I’m not surprised:

U.S. consumer credit unexpectedly tumbled in February, reversing the prior month’s surprise increase, as households refrained from taking on new debt in favor of deleveraging.

February’s total consumer credit outstanding dropped $11.51 billion or at a 5.62 percent annual rate to $2.45 trillion, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday.

I’m not surprised because banks are still cutting credit lines or imposing new standards on consumers so accounts will continue to drop off.  Additionally, some people (like me) continue to be disgusted with big banks and are purposely closing accounts.   By the time I’m done moving my money and closing accounts, I will have shut down over $100,000 worth of credit lines with big banks.   I am currently 40% of the way there and I’m replacing those credit lines with credit union credit lines and other debt instruments.   Someone has to take a stand and I’m doing my part…