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.
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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
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.
I pay $400 a year for the card itself and pay nothing beyond that. I have lounge access while traveling, get $300 a year in travel vouchers, get dash pass, and Hulu.
Unless you are not paying your balance cc’s are easy and save money unless you use them irresponsibly.
The cost of everything is artificially inflated by about 3% due to the merchant fees on said credit cards.
We’re all being played. If you have a cash back or rewards credit card, you’re just being played less. It’s a huge scam that were stuck using.
You’re paying 400 a year for the card? Fucking hell, I don’t think I’ve paid that much for my card in the 11 years I’ve had it
Yes. I fly 6 or 7 times a year though so with the $300 voucher it’s easy for me to make that $400 back.
Chase Reserve? Wondering if it’s worth it over the lower tier.
Only if you will use the travel vouchers religiously without forcing it, and really want free drinks and sandwiches during waits at airports. If you will use those things, and it’s not a forced thing, 100%, you’ll save money vs paying for food/drinks at retail prices.
Wait you get free drinks and sandwiches? Shit I usually pay like $50-70 in the airport bar/restaurant.
Yes. Lounge access is fantastic. You wont get free food every time, but most of the time it’s there for you.
Why would you not want free drinks and sandwiches?
Because it’s only “free” if you are going to use the services quite a bit already to make the math work out in your favor. If you don’t travel twice a year or more there are better cards out there which offer better discounts.
Well considering I travel more than twice a month, it’s a great perk.
Maybe Venture X? I have CSR and don’t think I get Hulu with it. I didn’t think Venture X had it either but I can’t think of other cards with 400 annual fee.
Probably not worth, it has a lot of overlap with other cards. The Ritz card provides better lounge access and the CSP has a 10% point bonus per year I think. I keep it because at an effective $250 annual fee (550 - 300 travel credit) I make more than the CSP from travel spend, where it has a 3x multiplier instead of 2x.
Flights go on Amex Plat, Marriott hotels on Ritz, other travel expenses (namely other hotels) on CSR. If you’re not spending enough on one of those categories the value of that respective card drops, save for the Ritz which is just worth it in every scenario.
Any recommendations for a good air miles cc? I have two 2% cash backs and realize I don’t need two that do the same thing lol.
Is it just me, or do most top comments on this post read like astro-turfing?
You should always be extremely wary of any post that presents a topic and then has comments offering you a ready-made opinion of that topic to make your own.
In this case, it doesn’t matter how many people furiously suck themselves off over how responsible they are with their credit cards and how their bank strokes their hair as they fall asleep, credit card companies raked in billions.
A non-trivial amount of that is going to be from who didn’t have the luxury of being “smart” or “careful” with their card because they were broke and desperate.
A billion dollars would buy a lot of sock puppets and wouldn’t even be 1% of their profits.
Is it just me, or do most top comments on this post read like astro-turfing?
I’ve been thinking this a lot about posts on lemmy and it’s really disappointing.
But it’s not just the corporate stuff that’s disappointing. A post on the front page right now about Spotify not removing the intentionally hateful transphobic song has an entire comment section justifying hate speech.
I question staying on lemmy more and more because I’m seeing trash rhetoric like this more and more and it’s fucking gross.
Meanwhile I see extreme leftists that cannibalize other leftists for not being left enough
Predatory as fuck too.
I remember when I was 18 at college there was constantly Credit Card companies setting up tables right off campus giving out free stuff if you signed up for a card.
I signed up for them constantly under my parents address and told them to cut up any credit cards that came in the mail. Took over a decade before any were closed due to inactivity but in the meantime I had an 800 credit rating right out of college because I had a crazy balance of unused credit.
I think I had north of 20k available between all the cards, just never used them because interest was like 20%.
It would have been very easy to fuck around and waste a lot of money.
It’s not difficult to use credit cards responsibly and come out ahead. Moat people just lack basic financial literacy and/or the willpower to not use them irresponsibly.
It’s easy until your bank accounts won’t cover important purchases and credit cards are the fastest and easiest way.
That’s called not being financially responsible. You are spending more money than you make. Credit cards didn’t create this problem.
Having an emergency is being financially irresponsible?
Seems to me you’re being a tad reductive.
Never said credit cards created that problem. Spending more than you make will never work for very long. But in a month where for example your vehicle and your water heater break and you’re not rich, you gotta do something.
I got $400 in cash back.
I guess all the businesses I used the card at had to pay fees though.
