The other day, I was talking with a friend when he got a text alert about a credit card he rarely uses. He said he wanted to see what it was all about and he’d get back to me. Which was fine since his attention was clearly now totally on that text.
That situation got me thinking about how there are multiple ways for people’s attention to get shifted and even hijacked these days. That particular interruption was inconsequential. Nothing important got sidetracked. But that’s not always the case, by any means.
When my friend called later, he said some unusual charges had appeared on his card and the credit card company was asking if the charges were his. (They weren’t.)
Technically the situation was not an emergency. My friend carefully reviews his bank and credit card statements monthly, so he’d have caught the fraudulent charges then – with plenty of time to report the situation to the credit card company. Or he could have it set up to get email alerts instead of texts.
Text alerts are certainly a good thing. But too much of a good thing can still be too much. Too many texts (or any kind of ping) can become counter-productive.
It’s easy to start to ignore all the pings and tell yourself you’ll get back to them “later.” But it’s also so easy to forget to do that.
People are starting to learn to ignore texts that seem like scams. But that can become a bigger problem if it gets you in the habit of sort of not noticing the genuine alerts either.
Your goal should be to think about what works best for you when it comes to “urgent” or “emergency” alerts so you can focus on the ones that matter, stop the ones that don’t and delete the scams.
Plenty of legitimate texters will ping you as much as you let them. It’s perfectly fine to say, “No more!” and streamline to what works for you. You get to decide.
Speaking of streamlining, my friend also said he was considering cancelling that credit card altogether. The card wasn’t important to him and it was just another thing he didn’t want be keeping an eye on – or not be keeping an eye on.
Leaving aside the issue of cancelling a credit card – which is a big topic on its own – my friend might be wise to close this particular card. That would be one less account to have compromised.
Keeping track of everything can be a real challenge. I recently heard about a parent who’d co-signed on a loan for their son. They told their son that he better keep up on the payments because the parent knew their credit would be dinged too if he didn’t.
About a year later, the son did miss a couple of payments – which his parent only learned about when they had a problem qualifying for a loan themselves because of their ”low credit score.”
This parent was upset with their son for not mentioning the late payments and more upset at themselves for not monitoring the situation the way they’d planned to. But the days do tend to slip away, without everything being closely monitored.
Since time and attention are limited resources, it’s a critical part of your Financial Fitness to be proactive about who gets access to you – when and how. Protecting your bandwidth and your ability to focus on what matters … that matters. A lot.
From the “Smart About Money” Canton Citizen column published on February 26 2026.
Nick Maffeo is the President & CEO of Canton Co-operative Bank – right next to the Post Office – in Canton.
Have a question? Email to info@cantoncoopbank.com.