Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: HOA credit card

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Oct 30, 2015, at 1:34 PM, Pat Elliott <pdelliott43 [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Any experiences, good or bad, with an HOA credit card? Guidelines for credit 
> card use and management suggestions? Credit card issuer suggestions?

We were told years ago that condos routinely handle cash purchases with a 
credit or debit card. It took a lot of convincing but we’ve had one for several 
years. 

We have member(s) who believe, like television, that credit cards are bad 
things and lead to worse things. And endanger the community. So we have tight 
constraints. Our policy is here:

http://www.takomavillage.org/governance-documents/archives/credit-card/

The credit limit is $2,000 for all expenditures, only two people can use the 
card and thus only they have the pin numbers. They have been good about 
ordering for other people. No one has yet skipped town with the $2,000. I don’t 
understand the concerns, however, because we have the person’s house and could 
put a lien on it if they were to depart for the Caiman Islands with funds that 
would hardly pay the plane ticket.

I think it would be much better to put all our monthly payments on the credit 
card and get rid of the management company. These expenditures are easy to 
download to CVS files so they can be imported to spreadsheets and financial 
programs. And I have found credit card companies to be very responsive to false 
charges. 

The issue with all financial records is the person who looks them over each 
month for duplicate payments, overcharges, missing payments, etc. Our 
management companies have never alerted us or questioned oddities. I think we 
would do a much better job of monitoring our own expenses.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org