Juat a rant, ignore me

[Jimbuna]

My position is identical to Tak regarding debt, mortgage and car.

I do however have a credit card which is seldom used but paid off at the end of each month if I do use it.

I'm not sure how they work in the US but here in the UK they come with automatic refunds if fraudulently used by anyone other than the cardholder and have a further use in insuring against holiday companies going bust (which is quite frequent here atm) when paid for by your card....at least that is what my Visa does

[Platapus]

There is one advantage of using a credit card - security

This happened to me one week ago. I have one credit card that I pay off every month. Last week, I opened up my credit card statement and found a bunch of charges made in PA (I don't do PA). Gosh, what a problem....for the credit card company, not me.

I hoped on the phone, all the fraudulent charges are taken off my account, the account was closed and a new credit card was issued to me. Had to send in a signed form (did not even have to pay the postage). Sure I went four days without a credit card and survived.

This is why I use my credit card for almost all my purchases. The risk is on the part of the credit card company. That's what I am not paying interest for when I pay off the account every month.

I was glad the credit card people found a solution to their problem of fraudulent charges.

[Takeda Shingen]

Jim and Platapus are indeed correct; you do get a decent amount of protection from fraud and identity theft, something that debit cards generally do not have.

[Tchocky]

I have 3 credit cards. Recently I had 4. I should probably explain that.

Right, card one is my standard Irish credit card, used for Steam, internet purchases and the like. It gets a fair amount of use and has never seen an interest charge.

Card #2 is my Dutch card. I didn't ask for one, it came with the account. Nice to have in an emergency I guess. It sits in my locker, gathering dust with licences and medical certs.

Card #3 is a MasterCard prepaid. I use this because it carries no €5 processing fee when booking Ryanair. With Dublin being a major hub I'm in and out a lot, and if the flight costs €12 then an extra €5 is something to be avoided.

Card #4 is a Visa Electron, which used to carry no processing fee with Ryanair. Needless to say, this card ain't used no more, cap'n

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Jim and Platapus are indeed correct; you do get a decent amount of protection from fraud and identity theft, something that debit cards generally do not have.

Yeah I found that out the other month when my bank locked down my debit card when a "mass compromise" occured and didn't bother to tell me about it. If it had been my credit card, i would have had an automated phone call within 10 minutes of the lock down.

[jumpy]

ha, credit cards... I have one with a modest amount outstanding.
Thing is, I never used it for anything I couldn't already afford (like others in this thread), until the recession bit my work and home life and then I had no choice if I wanted to keep a roof over my head. It's ironic that I never needed the use of a credit card until everything went tits up with the economy, then I had no choice.

This morning the bank sent me a letter reducing the amount of credit I can use, why this should be I don't know, since the amount outstanding on the card is greatly less than a quarter of my previous 'credit limit'. So, as there's a lack of jobs and income and ever increasing utility costs my margin for error or emergency to tide me over is gone now.

Banks; they'll give you an umbrella when it's sunny, then ask for it back when it starts to rain.

Fact is, if banks were not so damn greedy in the first place in lending to people who couldn't afford it, people who live in a consumer driven world where every measure of success is material in origin, then the banks wouldn't have fallen on their faces when their creditors decided they wanted to be paid up... to value a business or industry based on the potential value of all the cash it is owed is not the same as its true value in assets. Which fool thought that was a good idea needs shooting. But it's an idea that is so pervasive that even if you had no credit debt as an individual before the recession, chances are you probably do now because it was either that or have no gas or electricity supply (that's what my credit card was used for recently).

I lost my job and a respectable income because of something that was caused by other people; part of my home life was turned upside down due to this extra pressure. The jobs that are available round here as what I call 'non-jobs' of too few hours and negligible pay when stacked against the most basic necessities of providing food shelter and warmth... hehe, even if I sold everything I own and reduced my life to its barest minimum, it would only stave off the wolves from my door for perhaps another month.

For me the trap of credit use is that I only used it because I had no other choice and no sensible recourse to debt that was calling at my door no matter what I did. I don't like it... in fact I hate it.
I'd still be at my old job if it were not for the recession and this obsession with exponential profit/growth that banks, governments and company bosses seem to think is good. I'd still be there earning and paying tax and spending and saving - all my savings are gone, lost to the recession and my options are reduced so much I can scarcely believe it myself. It can only be a damn economist who thinks perpetual growth is a sensible goal.... whatever happened to the idea of sustainability in business and banking? Has the world gone totally mad with greed?