I have never given the bank a cent in interest as they make plenty charging the people who accept my
card a kick-back...

This is something else that may not be as simple to do as it once was so long as you continue to use your card. Back before Christmas I heard a blurb on the radio, purported as news, but it went by pretty fast and it was not one of those stories repeated by way of saturation coverage over several days. The gist of the report was, there are cedit card companies that have now resorted to charging higher fees to customers with an established habit (monthly, for instance) of paying their debt balance in full... or what the credit sharks call "paying off early". For instance, lets say your recent history went something like this: Day 1, you had just paid the previous month's invoice, in full, leaving a current debt balance of $0. During the next billing cycle, you have a reason to use the card, maybe rent a room for a night like you say. The next morning you check out, paying with the credit card. Then the billing cycle ends, credit company sends you an invoice noting the amount charged at the hotel, plus whatever added on fees they've contracted for. You send them a check for balance in full, paying the charge plus all fees incurred during the billing cycle in question, and the debt balance is back to $0. Compare this to people who, for instance, instead of paying off in full, they send a payment of less than the full balance of principle plus fees. With this new practice, the next time you use your card - lets say another night in the same hotel room at the same rate, when you next get invoiced, you may find that the total bill is higher than it was before.  Why? Because you've been penalized wiith additional fees for having established a history of paying off the full balance "early" as they like to say. This was recently confirmed for me by BoA no less when a monthly invoice came for some mail-order herbs purchased last month.

The message is clear, and it's a message that's already been mentioned before upteen ways to Sunday on forums here.  However, it seems to remain a message that the people by and large just don't want to get, perhaps because they have never really thought about it but would like to, perhaps because they are no longer capable of gettign it, and this  possibly because they no longer have the will to get it. The message is, credit companies of all stripes and the institution they're fronting for do not want people to pay off their debts in full. Why? Because based on the fundamentals the present fincancial institution is premised on, it_is_impossible for everyone to pay off their debts in full. Some people are able to pay off their debts. Some, if they don't already know, will find out that they cannot. Either way, if more and more people began paying off their debts, the primary hook this system is based upon would become more revealed for everyone to see. This is sort of similar to the sentiment propagated via the media in the wake of electin 00' "the present election system was not designed to handle an election this close.....and by quirk it just happened to take the events of an election like this one to transpire so as to bring reality into clearer focus"... and so it goes in a similar yet different fashion for the financial system. It is underpinned on the foundation of debt. It breeds debt. It encourages debt. Debt is it's lifeblood. Concerted efforts by people to attempt paying off debt will cause this system to shift, rumble, shatter and die the horribly miserable death it has long deserved and well earned.