Jul
Credit card or Not
Recently, there was an article about reasons to give up your credit cards. There are various thoughts on both having credit cards and not having credit cards.
Studies have shown that in a lot of cases you may spend more if you are using credit cards than if you are using cash. When you use cash you feel the pain of spending the money more and you need to know that you have enough cash with you. Some say that you need an active credit card to have a credit history and good credit rating.
It may be helpful to have a credit card, but it is important to try to be able to pay it off monthly to save on interest and finance charges. If you use a credit card to purchase things on sale and are unable to pay it off at the end of the month, then it was not such a great deal.
13:25, 14.07.2011
Can you please provide link(s) to the studies?
Thanks,
Dave
00:06, 15.07.2011
Following are a links to a couple of articles. also if you search for the topic more come up.
http://www.livescience.com/2849-study-credit-cards-spending.html
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/pay-in-cash.asp#axzz1S7x4olwp
According to the article “Cards Encourage You to Overspend†on Soundmoneytips.com, people will spend more with a credit card compared to cash. In fact, a Dunn & Bradstreet study found that people spend 12-18% more when using credit cards than when using cash. And McDonald’s found that the average transaction rose from $4.50 to $7 when customers used plastic instead of cash.
00:08, 15.07.2011
Today, I had dental work done and ended up saving $50 by having the money available and being able to write a check today.