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Last Topic: 10:57:06am, 06/20/2025
Last Post: 10:08:52pm, 10/15/2025
pedro45 posted...
Blind hate for credit cards is weird. Over the course of a year, I earn like half a week's pay and i don't pay any fees.
They're fine if used responsibly, but it's *really* easy to slip into using them irresponsibly. Studies have found that people tend to be comfortable spending more with credit than with debit or cash, sometimes as much as a 100% increase. Intellectually, there shouldn't be a difference, but that extra layer of abstraction takes away a lot of the feel of spending money, and removing barriers to spending always helps get people more comfortable with doing so such that they need to put that extra bit of conscious thought in to regulate their spending. Any time you introduce a need for customers to exercise conscious thought to protect themselves from poor spending decisions, you're going to get customers who don't exercise that conscious thought (whether because they're bad with money or just as a momentary lapse of judgement) making poor spending decisions, to your benefit. This is why so many credit options exist.
Personally, I'm with you. In the 10+ years I've been using credit cards for almost every purchase (I use debit for small businesses because the fees tend to be lower, but that's about it), I think I've paid a grand total of 70 cents in interest because I forgot to pay off like $50 before the payment deadline, and I've earned significantly more than 70 cents in rewards. I had to take advantage of my line of credit to do some debt restructuring due to moving expenses last year, which I'd otherwise have had to pay CC interest on, but that was a matter of temporarily going into CC debt knowing that I had that restructuring option to reduce my interest payments (I ended up paying like ~$10 a month for 3-4 months instead of ~$50) and that I'd have it paid down within a couple months once my girlfriend started the job we moved for and started making quite a bit more than she had been. That's very different from using a CC to spend more than I have and hoping to make enough to pay it down before the bill comes in.
I'm also good with money, though. I've got a head for numbers and tend to be quite frugal whenever I've got the option, all of which amounts to a pretty substantial advantage in that regard. Many people cannot claim that, and credit cards can be risky for them.
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