Almost a year ago I received a credit card that offered no interest on the first 12 months of purchases. Lovely, I thought. What I planned to do was to use it for things I was going buy any way and put the cash I would be spending into my savings account and pay it off at the end of the year.

For the most part that plan worked out fine. I currently have a credit card balance that I have not paid any interest on. It is going to be due soon when the 12 months are up, but I have plenty of cash on hand to pay it off. However, somewhere along the way I noticed that I was probably spending more money than I would if I actually had to spend the cash. It’s so easy to spend when it’s plastic money, isn’t it?

It wasn’t anything outrageous–just a few things here and there–but as a reformed spendaholic I’m constantly monitoring my spending habits to make sure I don’t “relapse.” Perhaps more importantly, any benefit that I had hoped to get from my deferred payment on these items is pretty much out the window if I’m spending more than I should!

A few months back I took that credit card and put it in a sealed envelope and put it in my closet. I figured, if I really needed it, it was there. Today, it occurred to me that I haven’t touched it since. Wonderful!

I’m actually pleased that I was able to recognize and actually be honest with myself that I was probably spending more than I should with the credit card, even if I wasn’t being reckless with it.

So, here’s a few tips if you feel a spendaholic relapse coming on:

• Hide that sucker! If you need to keep the card open, but you’ve got an itchy credit finger, put the card somewhere you can’t access easily. Even if this is only temporary, it can help quite a bit.
• Give yourself a timeout. Before making a purchase, decide on a set time frame that you’re going to wait to see if you’re not just acting on an impulse. Often we’ll buy things and then wonder, “Why did I buy that?” If you still want something about that “timeout” period and you still think it’s a good idea, go ahead and buy it. (Tip: thirty seconds is not an acceptable length of “timeout” for that new plasma TV you just read about.)
• If all else fails, get rid of the card. You often hear that closing your credit accounts can actually hurt your credit score. It’s actually true, but so can running up a balance you can’t afford to pay! You’re better off taking a small hit on your credit report (assuming you even do, it’s not guaranteed) for closing the card than running up a massive balance.

I must have missed when this started, but I noticed Yahoo! Finance has something called Entrepreneur of the Week now. This past week they profiled Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame. Personally, I love Craigslist so I was very excited to see what they had to say about him.

Computer programmer Craig Newmark originally started Craigslist.org in 1995 as a way to keep his circle of friends up to date on the latest happenings in the San Francisco social scene.

It’s amazing how many success stories start out this way. Drew Curtis of Fark.com fame used to send his friends funny stories (the type you’d find on Fark) via email. Eventually, he figured he shouldn’t bother all his friends by email just because some yahoo married a cat (or whatever the wacky story was that day), so he put them on a website. Now his friends could browse at their leisure. Fast forward 7 years or so and the guy is making somewhere around $1,000,000 a year.

I say it’s amazing because it sounds so simple, but when you think about it I guess it’s not so amazing. You’re not going to stick with a project that you hate, especially in the lean years before any money starts rolling in.

“I started my own simple listserv in 1995 to tell a group of 10 or 12 of my friends about the arts and cultural events happening at the Anon Salon or Joe’s Digital Diner, where people gathered once a month to learn about new tech products. Then one guy asked if he could post something for sale on the site while another wanted to try to find an apartment. That set the pattern for the site. I listened to people, figured out how to do what they wanted, and then did it.

There’s the next lesson from Mr. Newmark. LISTEN. It started out as one thing and slowly gravitated to what people wanted, while at the same time keeping the original spirit of the site alive. That was important to Craig and if you don’t believe me, read the following:

“A real turning point for the site came in 1997 after we hit 1 million page views a month. Microsoft offered to run some banner ads on the site. I thought long and hard about it, but at the time I didn’t need the money because I was on overpaid contract programmer. I thought ads were stupid and would just slow the site down.

That absolutely blows me away. I’m sure it helps that he didn’t need the money, but still that’s amazing. How many of us would turn down Microsoft if they came calling asking for ad space? (Bill, if you’re reading, ad space is available on this site.) Now, I think one could just as easily argue that he was foolish to turn down Microsoft and they might have a case. It’s not as if people would stop using the site if he put up a few ads. If fact, I imagine most of his users would have supported the decision. However, one of the appeals of craigslist is the simple interface and he wanted to maintain that. Maybe the site could have made more money over the years, but it’s certainly not hurting.

“We now have 24 employees, which works out well for us because we want to continue to stay small even as we get more traffic. We want to continue to provide tools to the people who use the site so that they can make things happen. Sometimes we think about redesigning the site’s interface, but the only people that care about redesigning are designers.”

I’m happy to see they haven’t changed the design. It just wouldn’t feel right if they did. Just as it wouldn’t feel right with some “Shoot the bunny and win an ipod” ad, it wouldn’t feel the same without the same simple gray background and blue text. And it’s certainly hard to argue with his success.