Credit Card Analytics

My bank has just sent me an analysis of my credit card spending habits. They have taken my expenses over a year, broken them into categories and provided me with an excel spreadsheet. My banker is obviously suffering from a delusion of mistaken identity and is behaving like an ill mannered husband. It may well be possible that my bank has hired too many specialists in esoteric areas like data-mining and data-warehousing who have been let loose in the realm of customer communication.

I hated the sight of the spreadsheet. It is the kind of thing a woman would look at in a masochistic mood, just after a breakup or an intense bout of depression. I threw the offensive paper into the dustbin which was unfortunately retrieved by my daughter in a rare moment of orderliness. She thought I had mistakenly thrown away the bank document and kept the envelope in my bag, something that I have been known to do.

She gave a loud hoot of laughter and said my bankers understood my psychology so well. She started to read the expenses under the various headings and wanted to know the difference between expenses on apparel, “department store” and “accessories”. I explained in Venn diagrams that the department store was the union set of apparel and accessories with cosmetics thrown in. She was happy about the low spend on car and healthcare both of which are irritant expenses which are normally handled by cash. She happily noted that our travel expenses had not reduced since the last year despite the recessionary condition.

A credit card is still used in our country for travel and leisure activities and not essentials. A woman primarily uses it for those instances of impulse buying when we shut down logic and give in to the mood of the moment. In a culture where the seven deadly sins are droned into our minds, only the tax man and marketing analytics experts want to learn about such decadent consumer behavior.