Americans paid $130 billion in credit card interest and fees in 2022, according to a new report. Here are three strategies to help limit those charges.
Until I wanted to be an actual adult, and realize you can’t be an adult without a good credit score anymore. Can’t even get housing without it now.
I fucking hate it. Being a captive customer for LIFE just to prove when you need to, you can pay back some charges. It’s insanity.
So I have a meager credit line now, and I pay for thing on it, and pay them off, like a good boy. Maybe someday I’ll be able to prove to a company that I’m not a shitbag, and they will let me purchase a home. Assuming I can ever afford that ( not at current trands…).
It’s possible, just tricky sometimes. You can have credit without a credit card, you can rent a home or a car without a credit score, and you can even buy a house without a “good” credit rating, you just need real landlords or real mortgage underwriting that looks at your financial situation as a whole.
It’s really silly. You could have a million bucks sitting in an account somewhere and your credit report wouldn’t say anything about that, but one look at your bank statements would be enough to tell a landlord or a mortgager you’re good to go.
I was fortunate enough to be able to sign up for a house payment (in this market! During the zombie apocalypse?!). When the time came for underwriting, they looked at 4 months worth of bank statements since my credit report just had my student loans and a car payment I got rid of in 2017 (in other words, not a “good enough” credit score). It was quite the eye opener of a process, having to explain every deposit to convince them I wasn’t laundering money.
Once that house is paid off, that’s the last time I’m going to have a credit score. I can get everything else without debt, I just didn’t have a cool $155k to drop on the house at the time. Hotels, car rentals, phone bills, electric bills, everything I’ve tried works fine without a credit check just using EFT or debit cards. Sometimes they charge a deposit, and that’s fine. I budget to account for that.
After giving this a read, I don’t think anyone has anything to get upset over. Unless I’m misreading this, it’s just calling the time between your statement being sent to you and when payment is due the “grace period.” Definitely not what I initially thought.
That’s interest charged from the time you get your statement. Not from the date of purchase. Which means no interest for upwards of 51 days if there’s a 21 day grace period.
This isn’t the big deal you’re making it out to be.
I managed to pay off a credit card that had points associated with it, so I set up my bills to auto-pay, and to automatically pay the whole balance early every month.
This is about the only good way to use credit cards. It feels good knowing I’m costing them money.
I’d be very surprised if you were actually costing them any money. The value of your points is almost certainly less than the merchant fees they’re collecting from your payees.
Those points are all paid for by the fees they charge the people you pay. You aren’t costing them money, you’re just not making them as much as people who can’t/don’t pay off their credit cards.
So you’re just fine with using your checking account which has no real fraud protection? The bank doesn’t care, it isn’t their money on the line. Credit card companies are putting up their money and in the case of fraud, they want their money back, protecting you. Nevermind the other benefits, which you’ve stated you don’t care about.
Mastercard and Visa both offer the same zero liability protection on debit cards as credit cards. So both my cards are comparable to credit cards in that regard. If I was at a bank that didn’t have good fraud protection I’d be shopping around.
I’ve never had a situation where fraud took money out of my account. Someone got my debit card information somehow (I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often). The bank called me, asked if that was me that was in London trying to buy something out of a vending machine, I said nope, they turned off the card and sent me a new one. No money ever left my account, and I wasn’t terribly inconvenienced, other than having to change a few autopay thingies.
I do get cash back bonus on my PayPal debit card. I appreciate the irony of taking advantage of that in contrast with my original comment. But I presume since PayPal is not a credit card company, they’re paying for it with the merchant fees they collect. I could be wrong.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All that said to say there’s nothing a credit card can offer me that a debit card can’t, except debt.
These fees are how they’re paying for your airline miles and cash back bonuses.
Personally, I’m perfectly fine without a credit card. I don’t care if I’m “giving up free money” because I know this is where it’s coming from.
That’s what I thought…
Until I wanted to be an actual adult, and realize you can’t be an adult without a good credit score anymore. Can’t even get housing without it now.
I fucking hate it. Being a captive customer for LIFE just to prove when you need to, you can pay back some charges. It’s insanity.
So I have a meager credit line now, and I pay for thing on it, and pay them off, like a good boy. Maybe someday I’ll be able to prove to a company that I’m not a shitbag, and they will let me purchase a home. Assuming I can ever afford that ( not at current trands…).
It’s possible, just tricky sometimes. You can have credit without a credit card, you can rent a home or a car without a credit score, and you can even buy a house without a “good” credit rating, you just need real landlords or real mortgage underwriting that looks at your financial situation as a whole.
It’s really silly. You could have a million bucks sitting in an account somewhere and your credit report wouldn’t say anything about that, but one look at your bank statements would be enough to tell a landlord or a mortgager you’re good to go.
I was fortunate enough to be able to sign up for a house payment (in this market! During the zombie apocalypse?!). When the time came for underwriting, they looked at 4 months worth of bank statements since my credit report just had my student loans and a car payment I got rid of in 2017 (in other words, not a “good enough” credit score). It was quite the eye opener of a process, having to explain every deposit to convince them I wasn’t laundering money.
Once that house is paid off, that’s the last time I’m going to have a credit score. I can get everything else without debt, I just didn’t have a cool $155k to drop on the house at the time. Hotels, car rentals, phone bills, electric bills, everything I’ve tried works fine without a credit check just using EFT or debit cards. Sometimes they charge a deposit, and that’s fine. I budget to account for that.
If you have enough savings, sometimes they don’t even look at your credit score and history.
Which is a more privileged position than having the ability to be ‘smart’ with credit card usage…
The primary reason not to have a credit card is if you will use it as an actual line of credit in any situation other than an emergency.
If you have enough savings, you’re smart enough to know to use a credit card
Jokes on them.
I have specifically have CC’s without a yearly fee, and get cash back.
I calculated a long time ago, the amount of spending I would need to do through a credit card per month, to just break even on the yearly fee.
Not fucking worth it.
Now you read the fine print, and all these CC companies reduced the time before interest kicks in to like 20 days instead of a month.
Don’t fall for that shit. Read the details. Most CC’s are a scam.
Do you have an example of a card who’s interest is applied before month end? That sounds shitty as hell
https://www.capitalone.com/learn-grow/money-management/credit-card-grace-period/
A lot of them are now at a 21-day grace period.
After giving this a read, I don’t think anyone has anything to get upset over. Unless I’m misreading this, it’s just calling the time between your statement being sent to you and when payment is due the “grace period.” Definitely not what I initially thought.
That’s interest charged from the time you get your statement. Not from the date of purchase. Which means no interest for upwards of 51 days if there’s a 21 day grace period.
This isn’t the big deal you’re making it out to be.
I’ve never seen bank fees for using a credit card in the USA.
Closest I’ve seen is certain methods of payment prefer a check since there’s no Stripe X% processing fee.
I managed to pay off a credit card that had points associated with it, so I set up my bills to auto-pay, and to automatically pay the whole balance early every month.
This is about the only good way to use credit cards. It feels good knowing I’m costing them money.
I’d be very surprised if you were actually costing them any money. The value of your points is almost certainly less than the merchant fees they’re collecting from your payees.
Those points are all paid for by the fees they charge the people you pay. You aren’t costing them money, you’re just not making them as much as people who can’t/don’t pay off their credit cards.
It’s always been a kickback towards the consumer so the CC companies can screw businesses.
Credit card companies are a huge leech on our economy.
So you’re just fine with using your checking account which has no real fraud protection? The bank doesn’t care, it isn’t their money on the line. Credit card companies are putting up their money and in the case of fraud, they want their money back, protecting you. Nevermind the other benefits, which you’ve stated you don’t care about.
Mastercard and Visa both offer the same zero liability protection on debit cards as credit cards. So both my cards are comparable to credit cards in that regard. If I was at a bank that didn’t have good fraud protection I’d be shopping around.
I’ve never had a situation where fraud took money out of my account. Someone got my debit card information somehow (I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often). The bank called me, asked if that was me that was in London trying to buy something out of a vending machine, I said nope, they turned off the card and sent me a new one. No money ever left my account, and I wasn’t terribly inconvenienced, other than having to change a few autopay thingies.
I do get cash back bonus on my PayPal debit card. I appreciate the irony of taking advantage of that in contrast with my original comment. But I presume since PayPal is not a credit card company, they’re paying for it with the merchant fees they collect. I could be wrong.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All that said to say there’s nothing a credit card can offer me that a debit card can’t, except debt.