The Long Game    

I was balancing a dozen credit cards, but to me the charges were just numbers on a screen that I figured I’d pay off at some point in the future. Meanwhile, I could keep doing minimums and living up to standard. And besides, how could this be crazy spending when everyone else was doing the same thing? 

Igrew up in Lakewood, though I didn’t have a typical background. Through a more circuitous route than most, I made my way to Jerusalem to study. There, I met my wife Rena, an American like me, and soon we got married. Those were halcyon days; I walked the sunlit streets on a high. My wife and I were making our own life and home.

I sometimes think of the young man I was, looking the same as the rest, coasting the Jerusalem streets. What did he know about making it in the real world or what it took to get by? Rena and I weren’t being supported by our parents, and we didn’t have much of a plan — but I had to pay rent and I had to buy food. When one of the guys at shul approached me with an idea, I was all ears.

“You can make money selling airline points,” he said. “The more you swipe your credit card, the more points you earn — and there are people who need others to swipe for them. You do it, they pay you back in cash — it’s a win-win.”

I leaned back against the seforim shrank. “Why do they need me exactly?”