Cheap Trick – "ELO Kiddies" (1977)

 

So you missed some school?

You know school’s for fools

Today money rules

My obsession with rewards-offering credit cards started out innocently enough.  I signed up for a few airline-branded cards that offered 50,000 free miles to new cardholders – good enough for a free roundtrip.

Then I got a credit card that offered a 1% rebate on all my non-airline-related purchases.  Life was good!

But eventually I was seduced by the appeal of a dizzying array of niche credit cards, each of which offered a unique discount – money for nothing.

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Did you know that Amazon has a credit card that gives Amazon Prime members 5% back on Amazon purchases.  Walmart offers a card that does the same when you buy from Walmart.

I don’t do the majority of my shopping at Amazon or Walmart, but I obtained cards from those two companies and set up my online accounts with them so that my purchases were billed to those credit cards instead of to my regular 2% card.

I also picked up an REI card, which gives you 5% back on REI purchases.  I do relatively little shopping at REI.  But if I use my REI card to pay my cell phone bill each month, I get free insurance on my cell phone – no more paying the cell phone company $10 or $15 a month to protect me if I break or lose that b*tch.

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About a year ago, I was filling up at my local Exxon station when I saw a brochure offering an Exxon/Mobil Mastercard.  That card gives you 10 cents off a gallon when you use it to charge Exxon/Mobil gas – which usually works out to be a bigger discount than the 2% rebate I get by using my regular credit card.

But for the first 60 days after you activate your Exxon/Mobil card, you get an additional 30 cents off per gallon.  If my math is right, that’s a total of 40 cents a gallon . . . which is about 10% off the current inflated price of Democrat gasoline.

Shortly after I got my Exxon/Mobil, I learned that BP offered a similar card – so I got one of in case I needed to buy gas at a BP station.

By the way, there two grocery store chains I shop at regularly have programs where your grocery purchases can earn you discounts of up to $1.00 per gallon on gas at Exxon/Mobil and BP stations, respectively.  That’s why I buy gas from those stations whenever possible.

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So far, so good.  But one day I got an e-mail from Amazon offering me a 10% discount on gasoline purchases for a 90-day period.

That’s few cents a gallon more in savings than my Exxon/Mobil and BP credit cards offered.  So I quickly switched to using my Amazon card to fill up.

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The Amazon card also promised me a 3% discount on restaurant and grocery store purchases.  That trumped my Harris Teeter credit card, even on purchases at Harris Teeter grocery stores – which is my go-to for the wild-caught salmon I eat three or four nights a week.  

But I also have a Citibank-issued Mastercard that gives me a 5% discount on whatever is my biggest purchase category each month – which is almost always groceries.  

The only catch on that card is that if you spend more than $500 on groceries in a billing cycle, the discount reverts to 1%.  (That’s chump change, bro!)

I try to keep a running mental tally of my monthly grocery purchases so I can switch credit cards at the appropriate moment.

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Every time you make a hotel reservation these days, you’re offered the opportunity to get a Hilton or Marriott or Wyndham or Holiday Inn credit card.  

If you take the company up on the offer, you’re given a sizable number of points good for free hotel stays.  Since I was thinking I might be staying at a Hilton-branded hotel for some time while the 2 or 3 lines organization was moving into its new digs, I jumped at the chance to get a Hilton card.

Later, I found out that I could save some jack by staying at a nearby Marriott property instead of the Hilton I had originally made a reservation at.  Naturally, I applied for a Marriott card.  

But much to my dismay, the bank that issued the Marriott-branded card turned me down!

My credit score was a few points higher than my SAT number – so what the f*ck was that all about?

“We have denied your application for a Marriott Bonvoy credit card because you have recently applied for an excessive number of new credit cards,” I was told.

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I bought Cheap Trick’s third studio album, Heavn Tonight, shortly after it was released in 1978.  The first track on that album was the brilliant “Surrender” – “Mommy’s alright/Daddy’s alright/They just seem a little weird” – and I just had to have it.

But I was not at all familiar with the rest of the band’s oeuvre until I started listening to the “Underground Garage” channel on Sirius/XM – you hear quite a few Cheap Trick songs there.

“ELO Kiddies” is the very first track on Cheap Trick’s eponymous debut album.  It’s a little bit m-o-n-e-y!

Click here to listen to “ELO Kiddies.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.