It looks like the credit card companies will get their law making it harder to file for bankruptcy – and I have a way of getting back at them. Pay your entire credit card bill. That way, they don’t make a dime off you. They hate that.

And they deserve it. No, I don’t have a HUGE amount of sympathy for people living beyond their means. But I feel for anyone who has to use a credit card as unemployment insurance in a tough job market, or medical insurance when health coverage is slipping away, or as survival when the minimum wage hasn’t gone up in nine years – and still won’t. Then they get hit with loan-shark interest that would make Tony Soprano wonder how he could bust into this racket.

Unfortunately, the bill’s sponsors sympathize only with the wealthy, for whom they’ve left a loophole. In several states, you can still hide your money in an asset protection trust fund – which costs so much to set up, it’s not worth doing unless you have $500,000 or more in liquid assets. And if you had that, well, you wouldn’t be dodging phone calls from Visa, now would you.

So if you can pay off your entire bill – oh baby, do it. The companies that made this bill will start calling you a deadbeat. Maybe you think it would be kind of scary to write a check for several thousand dollars – which, by the way, it is. But if you’re like me – if you don’t have kids, if you’re not supporting anybody – this could be within your power.

And let the companies know why you’re doing it. Write it on the check. “This is for all the sick and the elderly and the unwed mothers. This is for Evangeline, my lost love from seventh grade, who probably has several kids by now and is going broke, and if only she had noticed me, we’d be snuggling in a loving home and going broke together.”

Sorry. I drifted. My point is, pay it all off. If the credit card companies want to abuse the helpless, then the rest of us won’t be their friends anymore.