If you listen to gurus like Dave Ramsey, you may find yourself feeling like you’re listening to a sermon in which the evil character is the credit card rather than the devil. Perhaps the two are interchangeable. Yes, credit card companies use marketing to lure customers with the hope of making tons of money in late fees, interest fees, annual fees, ad infinitum.
One could say this is little different than seminar leaders who use marketing to lure customers with the hope of making tons of money in sales of books, seminars, board games, bobble-heads, ad infinitum, but that isn’t the crux of what I’m writing about. All businesses must make money in a capitalist society. That’s not the point.
Credit cards are not inherently evil. The idea that all credit cards should not be used by all people is a blanket statement that doesn’t reflect reality. Here is where I stand on the issue.
I agree that many people should not be extended credit. Someone who does not handle alcohol should not be given drinks. More to the point, alcoholics should not be given virtually unlimited access to alcohol, much the same way habitual spenders may not be able to handle access to credit.
Despite what should or should not happen, in most cases customers are adults, capable of making their own decisions about spending. If they want to carry a balance from month to month, paying interest fees and possibly other fees as well, it is a free world.
Some will argue that it’s a good thing that fee-payers (let’s call them “Type A” for now) are not restricted because it allows credit card companies to offer cash back bonuses or travel rewards, which can be maximized by responsible customers (“Type B”). These fees paid by Type As (in addition to transaction fees charged the merchants) subsidize Type Bs.
Yes, these reward programs are still not much more than marketing ploys designed to get people in the door and hopefully pay the company lots of extra money (when Type Bs become Type As). But you can beat the credit cards by being completely responsible by paying on time, every time the full balance every month.
Sometimes credit card companies border unscrupulous and will do everything in their power to screw the customer, including shortening the grace period without notice or accidentally mis-billing. A quick call to customer service usually solves this “problem,” but involves a level of intelligence and positive action by the customer. I’ll look at some of these issues in the next part of this series.
Do people spend more with credit cards than they would with cash? It’s certainly possible, but irrelevant if the card user is intelligent enough to spend only what they can cover with cash when the bill is due. What if an emergency arises, like the loss of a job before the due date? The intelligent individual has an emergency fund or another type of plan ready to go in this event.
Part 1: The Good
Thanks to the generous bonuses offered by credit card companies—once again, to lure customers in in the hope they will screw up—people who are diligent can come out ahead. If the customer watches each step they take as well as every notice from the credit issuer, he can take advantage of the credit card companies rather than the other way around.
When my apartment complex decided to start taking rent payments by credit card again, I was ecstatic. Now, it may not be a good idea for all the tenants in the development to pay their rent by credit card; I can’t speak for their financial situations. Every time I charge rent, I transfer the same amount from my checking account into savings so the money is put aside and earning interest until the bill is due over 30 days later.
This is what businesses call leverage. Basically, the credit card company gives me a free loan every month when I pay my rent with a credit card. You can look at it another way: my apartment complex lets me keep my cash for at least another month. I am free to earn interest on that money in my savings account. This is irony at its most beautiful: Rather than paying interest to credit card companies, I am earning interest on money that was already due to the landlord.
On top of the interest I’m earning, the credit card I use provides me with cash back for every single transaction. (Here’s a comparison of cash back (rebate) credit cards.) I’m earning interest and cash back on a bill I’d have to pay anyway, whether with a credit card or cash. The amount I pay with cash or by credit card is exactly the same. Therefore, paying by credit card is a much better deal for me.
This is the case for many people interviewed by Liz Pulliam Weston for her recent article, People Who Charge Everything.
These “plastic warriors” are determined to charge everything they can to their credit cards so they can maximize their rewards. They don’t carry balances—paying interest would wipe out their benefits—but they put every purchase and bill possible on their cards.“We figure if we have to pay for something, we might as well be earning something in return,” summed up Winston-Salem, N.C., resident Kelly Piercy, who charges utility, cell-phone and Internet bills, among others.
It’s not about spending more on cards because it’s easier. These are expenses that would have to be paid anyway, and the amounts would not change based on the method of payment.
Another often overlooked advantage to credit cards is the fraud protection they provide. You take risks whenever you engage in any transaction. With a credit card, the risk is that you won’t be able to pay the bill (a risk which intelligent people as stated above will hedge through existence of an emergency fund or plan). With cash (including checks), the risk is you will be defrauded and you will be responsible for the total sum.
Nevertheless, there are a number of caveats to this philosophy. Even the most astute Type B credit card rebate aficionado will encounter many traps. In the next part of this short series, we’ll look at the dark side of credit cards.
I’ll end with a question: How would your life be different without credit cards?
Subscribe
Thanks for the full feeds. It’s the best part of this site…
This is a subject that seems to be on a lot of people’s minds this week.
I recently posted on our blog about this subject. Getting the most out of credit cards as a financial vehicle depends, above all, on discipline, plain and simple. If you pay off your card balance every month, avoid finance charges and fees like the plague, you can gain substantially from the benefits of credit cards.
I see we both think about things that are Good, Bad, and Ugly. Fortunately for everyone else, you think in a broader scope than me :)
http://www.moneysmartlife.com/2006/12/15/the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-credit-card-alerts
Huh weird. I wonder if your post title was in my subconscious when I came up with this series. I hope you’re not offended… I didn’t consciously steal your title, I promise. :-)
Well if it was in your subconscious as a title from Money Smart Life then I’m honored to have you as a reader!
Great topic, no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.
It’s not rocket science to understand that clearing your bills off every month is the right way to handle credit cards…and yet millions will rack up incredible balances and later blame the credit card companies for being evil.
It’s not like people don’t know about finance charges and late fees and stuff…it’s just some sort of a complacency.
Ahh… The Credit Card…
I haven’t used one of the little jokers in over 2 years, and we are just fine. (I use a debit card connected to a secondary checking account for my online purchases…)
BTW, just one thought…
As for the inherent evil of the credit card, check this: EVERY purchase made with a credit card costs the merchant at least 2 to 3 percent… and who ends up paying for that 2 or 3 percent merchants fee? Why, Joe Consumer, that’s who. And, with FIFTY percent of all transactions going through one of the cc companies, that means that there is a 2 to 3 percent INCREASE in the price of fifty percent of the transactions in America…
So, in my opinion, they may not be “evil”... but they certainly aren’t “righteous”...
Uh I don’t know about you, but I’m not charged 2-3 percent more when I use a credit card as opposed to cash…the costs get spread around to everybody. But you have to look at it this way, if there was no credit people wouldn’t buy nearly as much, goods would be produced less and therefore end up costing more (decrease in economies of scale) Our enormous use of credit is what makes our goods so cheap to begin with.
Mel, the merchant has to pay a 2 to 3 percent fee for every credit transaction… and the fee gets passed on to all consumers… so yes “the cost gets spread around to everybody”... and this is a good thing? what? did i lose my mind? as for the economic benefits of credit… keep in mind that, at some point, someone is going to have to PAY for all of this stuff… focusing on the macro is just fine, but not to the detriment of the micro…
in other words, the goods i purchase with cash have a credit card fee built into them that would not exist w/ out credit cards… it’s just that simple.. merchants pass the fee charges to all of us…
Enough with the Dave Ramsey bashing – his advice is personal finance 101, somewhere people should start and can develop the discipline to not overspend. Too many folks out there trying to be “sophisticated” and all too often end up deep in debt trying to maximize a 1-5% discount in credit card points. I’m not saying that there aren’t people disciplined enough that can take advantage of those little discounts, but it’s because those people can budget their money that they can pay those credit card balances off every month. I’m making an educated guess that are far more people who can’t manage their money that well and end up in trouble as a result. Does he sell his products on the air? Yes, but he’ll give you those exact same products (the content of his books) for free on his radio show. I don’t see anything wrong with advocating that people save a basic emergency fund, make a basic budget, pay off their debts and don’t borrow any more money, then start saving – Dave’s critics seems to miss these parts of his advice. Given his “kick in the rear” delivery style when people need it, I can see how some are turned off from his message. If that happens – turn it off, which is what I’m doing. Clicks on “Unsubscribe”..........
Nice, I didn’t even bash Dave Ramsey in this post. His advice does go beyond Personal Finance 101 by instilling beliefs which are financially damaging to would-be “Type Bs,” but most Type Bs wouldn’t be listening to him anyway.