For most of recorded history, the safest ledger in the world was a piece of wood. A debt was carved into a tally stick as a row of notches — each mark a sum owed — and then the stick was split down its length into two halves.
The lender kept the longer half, called the stock. The borrower kept the shorter, the foil. Because the grain and the notches ran across the split, the two halves fit only each other — rejoin them and every mark had to line up. No forgery, no revision, no "that's not what we agreed." The stick remembered.
It worked so well that the English Exchequer ran the kingdom's accounts on tally sticks for six hundred years. The language never left us: we still tally up, still call investors stockholders — the people literally holding the stock half of the debt.
A premium credit card is a modern debt in the old direction: in exchange for the annual fee, the issuer owes you — dining credits, travel credits, lounge doors, free nights. Their half of the stick is the benefits page, written in their terms, reset on their calendar, forfeited quietly when a month slips by.
TallyStick is your half. Every credit you capture is a notch cut on your side of the ledger. When the year ends, hold the halves together: what they promised against what you actually collected. The goal is simple — every mark lines up, and the fee paid you back.
Our mark is the oldest count there is: four strokes, and the fifth that closes the group. The green stroke is the one you draw.