Charles Payne warns of a collapse in American spending, citing steep declines in restaurant, airline, and lodging purchases. Bank of America data shows credit card spending stagnating as debt hits record highs. Rising interest rates are squeezing consumers.
This is part of the reason I have always refused to get a credit card. Seems to be going well for me so far. Already got a house and other than that never plan to borrow money again.
If you are financially stable you can certainly use credit cards in a responsible way, gaming the system to earn cashback, points and other perks while always paying back in full and thereby never giving the card companies anything.
But it’s obviously tempting to build up debt.
It takes a pretty high amount of discipline to do correctly, which I’m sure you know (or just an income that dwarfs one’s spending, which I don’t have lol).
I did the optimization move myself, had my bills and such on autopay with the rewards card, always paid it down to zero, it went great.
Years went by and I got sloppier about it, stopped watching as closely because it didn’t seem to need much monitoring. Ended up carrying a balance without realizing it for a while, the interest charges on which wiped out the benefits/rewards I had previously accumulated.
So don’t be like me, either stay disciplined and get some free money or just avoid it and stay outta trouble lol.
Nothing except your entire purchasing history which can be used to infer all sorts of things about you.
As well as the 2-4% that the merchant pays to them for every one of your purchases. That is passed on to you in the price that the store charges. Only gas stations regularly give you a discount for cash, and that discount is them just removing that 2-4% up-charge that they need to include to cover their payment to Mastercard or Visa on the very thin margin that they make in selling gas.
Heard enough of people getting into really bad debt that I would rather just entirely avoid them
I’ve used credit cards for (oh gosh i’m old) many years and never carried a balance nor paid a fee. I could probably optimize harder (eg: finding cards with higher rewards), but that would probably be more effort than it’s worth.
But as others have said, that’s not always easy. I knew a guy years ago who just maxed out his cards and then to his surprise he got in a lot of trouble. I don’t really know what he expected to happen. We lost touch but last I heard he’d finally managed to turn his life around, but it was a lot.