I hate credit cards

[Domo]

LOL - OP, choose either Las Vegas or the Maldives, not both. That'll help get you over this rough patch!

I was thinking of both, a 5* stopover in Dubai, a jaunt on the Orient Express and then a spell in Disney World...

...I WISH

 

[JediBonas]

I LOVE my credit cards, I pay for pretty much everything with mine and hardly ever carry cash. We get cash back with one and Disney rewards with the other. We pay them all off completely every month, so we never pay interest or carry a balance.

 

[kamik86]

I like mine...

I like getting perks such as free flights for opening them. (I have 50,000 american points and plan to do that on united soon as well)

I like the convenience of not having cash. Instead of budgeting exactly I just use my cards for everything as does DH. Every two weeks I check the purchases for anything that looks off (fraud etc) as well as for a few categories we do specifically budget for and then pay the bill. No worries about being late since we pay every two weeks. Only exceptions are:

DH carries all his credit cards, I only carry the ones we actively use we have a few others we got for deals but with no annual fee there was no reason to cancel them. Problem is sometimes he grabs the wrong card and if he doesn't remember and tell me I don't know to check that card and pay it. DH also doesn't open all his mail. He tends to see something about a credit card and assume its an offer. Sometimes this has gone on for a few months before I happen to check the mail before him one time and notice this late bill. (He has gotten better since we implemented a 50% stupid tax rule. If you get a large bill for something you did that was stupid, like forgetting you used the wrong card and not checking mail, or getting a speeding ticket, a parking fine, etc we have to pay 50% of the fee out of our "fun" money account.)

If we have a larger purchase that we make the call to do early and put on a 0 interest card and pay off. We did this with the new garage door. OUr old one broke (spring was damaged) so the door wasn't safe to use. Now we COULD have waited until we saved the money to pay for it with all our other goals (which would have been last week) but we live in MA and having a garage in winter makes life SOO much easier. So we bought it early and floated it for 2 months on no interest. The slight risk that DH would have gotten really lower hours and it would have taken longer to pay off (very slight risk over the holiday season... he works retail) was more then worth it for not having to get in a freezing car or scrape snow and ice off the car in the morning.

 

[kamik86]

lol, it's no issue guys, I don't feel jumped upon It would be worse if I were living off the damn things, but I'm happily afloat I was just pointing out the epic proportions of the over-limit fees that are plonked upon you even if you go over by 1p!

I find the easiest thing to do is to spend then immediately write the debt off online. If I miss anything, it's my own fault and I just have to face up to facts!

Oh Yeah I saw that once... I got them all waived (if you only mess up once in a great while they will do that) but definitely saw that once.

I messed up putting in my bank info. So the payment didn't go through, but when the payment didn't go through a weird hold thing happened that made it look like we charged the amount of the payment. So it made it look like we were also over the limit. But of course the card was still working and I didn't know the payment was messed up for a few days. It was a large payment for the size of the limit too (like $1000 on a $2500 card)

When I noticed it was messed up I called, gave the correct info, but the weird payment loop was still making it over limit. I asked if that could be fixed but since that wouldn't fall off for a few days they just raised the limit to where it wasn't an issue anymore (It was a card I had since college and they never reassessed the limit based on my now much higher then a students income) and waived all the fees. (Only after I threatened to stop using the card and use a different one though... they apparently like the money they get from the 2K I charge a month)

 

[RitaE]

I set all of mine to make the minimum payment automatically just as a back-up to if I have a complete brain freeze and forget to pay one. I usually make a payment every week of all our current charges, just so the balances never build up to heart stopping levels. And if I've already made the payment, then the automatic payment doesn't occur. I have over the years a couple of times forgot to pay on time and that automatic payment has saved us.

Can you access your accounts online and set automatic payments?

 

[ronandannette]

I wish I'd gotten "with the program" with cards that offer points and perks when they first emerged 10 or 15 years ago. I envy the the people that are flying around for free and having their insurance covered and whatnot. But I'm old-fashioned and could never quite feel comfortable using credit for every mundane purchase and because we sometimes carry a balance I've only ever had a single, high-limit, low-interest and no-fee card issued by my bank. I think about applying for others and trying to get in a new routine sometimes but so far I haven't taken any action. We generally do about $3,000/mo in retail spending (groceries, gas, incidentals). If I were to get serious about it, what kind of rewards could I expect to accrue over, say a year?

 

[pryncess527]

I wish I'd gotten "with the program" with cards that offer points and perks when they first emerged 10 or 15 years ago. I envy the the people that are flying around for free and having their insurance covered and whatnot. But I'm old-fashioned and could never quite feel comfortable using credit for every mundane purchase and because we sometimes carry a balance I've only ever had a single, high-limit, low-interest and no-fee card issued by my bank. I think about applying for others and trying to get in a new routine sometimes but so far I haven't taken any action. We generally do about $3,000/mo in retail spending (groceries, gas, incidentals). If I were to get serious about it, what kind of rewards could I expect to accrue over, say a year?

I wish I'd gotten with the program earlier too. It wasn't until we'd been using YNAB for a few months that I became comfortable seeing CCs as just another way to pay for budgeted purchases and started running all our purchases through them.

In 2015, I earned $1,608.92 in credit card rewards, all directly as cash in my checking or statement credit.

My most heavily used cards are the AmEx Preferred Cash which gives me 6% back on groceries, and my USAA AmEx which gives me 5% back on gas.

 

[RitaE]

I wish I'd gotten "with the program" with cards that offer points and perks when they first emerged 10 or 15 years ago. I envy the the people that are flying around for free and having their insurance covered and whatnot. But I'm old-fashioned and could never quite feel comfortable using credit for every mundane purchase and because we sometimes carry a balance I've only ever had a single, high-limit, low-interest and no-fee card issued by my bank. I think about applying for others and trying to get in a new routine sometimes but so far I haven't taken any action. We generally do about $3,000/mo in retail spending (groceries, gas, incidentals). If I were to get serious about it, what kind of rewards could I expect to accrue over, say a year?

We earned a little over $2000 in 2015, largely due to my husband's business travel. I could do better if I paid more attention to what cards are offering better cash back awards for the period (like Discover and their 10% Apple Pay reward) but that's a lot of detail work that I never seem to get accomplished. My standby card is the Fidelity American Express and those rewards deposit right into a brokerage account and get invested and over the years it does add up.

 

[BrianL]

My credit cards provide an advantage to me and I pay them off every month too, but I get what the OP is saying is that the way they make their money is not off of people like me. They are set up to collect steep fees and exorbitant interest, and like many financial products, target people who are most susceptible to paying more, like college students for example. They can be used responsibly, but if everyone did that, the companies probably wouldn't be so keen on issuing cards at all.

 

[lakelandgal70]

I don't love nor hate credit cards. We use them but pay them off every month. What I don't get is why they give such high limits on them? And the one I have from overstock they sent me an email and the wording was misleading. Something about you have x amount of money to spend. I find that misleading and know people who would think nothing of maxing out the card with no intention of paying it back. I do not carry credit cards with me when I go out and use debit card most of the time.

 

[CdnCarrie]

Heading to Florida in a few weeks and got my WDW, UO and car rental for free using my credit card (Air Miles). Love it.

 

[MrPTato]

We use Credit Cards for everything. I only have an ATM card for when I need cash for a small place...I don't even have a debit card. We net around $1200-$1500 in rewards annually that pay for what we like to do...Go to Disney!! I have the cash anyway, so for me it makes sense to use a card that will give me perks and I just pay the bill when it come in. I pay $45 in fees a year for the Disney Premier card, but the benefits outweigh the fee ten-fold.

 

[Planogirl]

I was thinking of both, a 5* stopover in Dubai, a jaunt on the Orient Express and then a spell in Disney World...

...I WISH

LOL! I know that feeling very well. You'll get beyond this. Most of us have been there and many of us are still there.

 

[Colleen27]

We use them for all charges, pay off each month w/out interest and rake in all the rewards. If you know how to use them and have some financial discipline, they are a wonderful way to get free rewards.

But let's be real... the reason they offer those 'free' rewards is because they know that the overwhelming majority of people aren't perfectly vigilant about their finances. They'll lose a job, experience a financial emergency, or simply miss a payment deadline once in a while. And they will, over time, pay enough in interest and fees to be profitable despite the perks they earn with their spending. That's the whole reason those perks are offered... not to "reward" smart credit card management but to get people in the habit of choosing plastic.

 

[DSLRuser]

we recently switched. we like most folks had been in credit card debt. dug our selves out, and were cash only for so long.

This year we decided to bank all our cash and spend every dime on American Express. I didnt like handing our my debt card to people or shopping on line with it. To each his own. You just have to stay diligent.

 

[Albort]

learn to churn! make the credit cards work for u!

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

I still have some CC's, I hope I don't end up using them. I got some pre-paid cards and I use those for shopping. They make me watch what I am spending a lot closer.

 

[mnrose]

Here's another curious fact about CC debt. When I had that "big bill" (see above), my credit score took a big hit (80 points). Not that it matters much to me as I don't have any need for a home loan or car loan, etc. However, when I then paid it off in FULL (before the due date), my credit score went back up, but by only 60 points. Weird. I would think from a credit perspective, this would look as "good" as it did "bad" (dinged for having high credit utilization). The one thing they say I could do to "raise" my score is to have an installment loan, like a mortgage or car payment. Not interested, thanks.

 

[Gracie09]

We unfortunately have large legal bills right now. They go on credit cards that we pay off monthly. The provider likes it because we don't carry a balance and they have their money. We have so far received $1000 in cash back and enough points for four round trip JetBlue tickets to Florida. I'm holding out for Turks and Caicos

 

[kamik86]

Here's another curious fact about CC debt. When I had that "big bill" (see above), my credit score took a big hit (80 points). Not that it matters much to me as I don't have any need for a home loan or car loan, etc. However, when I then paid it off in FULL (before the due date), my credit score went back up, but by only 60 points. Weird. I would think from a credit perspective, this would look as "good" as it did "bad" (dinged for having high credit utilization). The one thing they say I could do to "raise" my score is to have an installment loan, like a mortgage or car payment. Not interested, thanks.

I didn't see where above you talked about a big bill... I think it might be that to the formula having alot of debt on a big purchase looked like you had some type of financial issue, even if you really didn't. Also the cards only report your balance once a month generally so even if you only have the balance for a week if it hits at the wrong time it will look like you had it for a few weeks.

I would be more careful with how I used my cards for a bit if I needed a home loan or something in the near future, however since right now I'm not worried about that it doesn't matter. The two things that often flag for me is sometimes utilization if the day they reported happened to be the day before I paid it off that month and my length of credit history (but I recently passed the 10 year mark for my first card so I'm almost old enough to not be penalized for being young anymore)