Credit Cards

[chyam]

We have a separate checking account that we use for online purchases only and use the debit card from that account. There's never any more than $100.00 there unless we're planning a large internet purchase. If we want to buy a big item from the internet, I transfer the amount we plan to spend, wait a day, then buy the product. When the balance gets low, I simply replenish by transferring more money in.

You're wrong about no recourse. Check with your banking institution, but at PNC if a charge is made that we didn't approve and we report the theft right away, they reimburse us for the amount. Fortunately we haven't had to deal with this personally, but I know people who have and they were very happy with how it turned out.

We've lived on cash for well over a year now and I'm generally loving it. It was difficult at first, but I'm going to keep doing this for as long as possible. We really, really think about what we spend our money on now, weighing whether or not we really need that CD or new phone if it means we'll have less in the account until payday, as opposed to just putting it on the card and forgetting about it.

Same for me...the CC can take their 20+ % rates and put it where the sun shines! Always a good customer, always paid on time, always paid more than the minimum and still saw my credit limits drop and my interest rates sky rocket. I will never own another credit card.....finished my last ones last month.

 

[testifyoncruises]

Cash only and Bill Me Later for online purchases if necessary. Or we use a Debit Card. By the way, we are not worried about being Cleaned out as we use a Visa branded debit card which offers Zero liability: http://usa.visa.com/personal/security/visa_security_program/zero_liability.html

If your account is compromised, Visa is committed to setting things right without further aggravation or inconvenience to you. Visa’s cardholder protection policy requires all financial institutions issuing Visa products to extend provisional credit for losses from unauthorized card use within 5 business days of notification of the loss.

Our credit score is in the toilet but we could care less because we simply do not use credit cards. If we do not have the cash, we don't buy anything.