please empty your brain below

one reason why i've never had a credit card, although it can be a bummer if i want to buy something online.

Thanks dg, with this post you've suddenly reminded me about a £15,000 student loan that I have yet to pay back.

Cheers.

(Though I should mention that I have two credit cards and owe nothing on either of them. I am a good girl).

"[£100]...roughly equivalent to the average credit limit for a new customer today..."

REALLY? I bet £100 is about the average outstanding balance!

They always offer about £5,000 credit limit in my experience. I have 1 credit card and it has a Direct debit to clear the whole balance every month, and 1.5\\% cashback.

I bet BW will be commenting on this post!

The interesting figures in there (for a nerd like me) were that 63\\% of people have credit cards and 63\\% of retail spending is by credit card.

Oops i'm one of those cashless people, if i could pay for everything with a card I would, makes it easier to see what i spent my money on without having to carry even more receipts than I already do.
Sorry if you were ever stuck behind me people.
Surprised only 25\\% of people pay their balance in full though. I guess more people than I thought were asleep during the lesson on compound interest.
Around this part of London there are quite a few people who do not have a credit card on religious grounds.

Maybe, but playing the 0\\% balance transfer into an offset mortgage account game allows us to live, mortgage-payment-free.

At one point last year I had almost £90K of the banks' money at 0\\%, stashed in my offset mortgage and various high-rate savings accounts, where the bank were paying me over 5\\% interest on money I'd borrowed from them at 0\\%.

But, you do have to be *very* disciplined to be successful, and to read the small print carefully. Plus, it takes time to work it all out - although now I spend maybe 1 or 2 hours a month keeping it all running - which saves us £7,000 a year.

£7K for perhaps 20 hours work a year. Not many 'average' people earn that, now do they?

Oh - and - I trust anyone with a credit card who always pays off their balance each month has a cashback card? Some of them pay 1\\% back.

By putting all our spending (sorry DG, I am that person paying for a newspaper with a credit card ) and all Mr BW's business expenditure on plastic, not only do we have a permanent record of all our expenditure, but we also get almost £500 a year in cashback for so doing.

Sadly, credit is part of the modern world. One just has to be smarter than those who devise the rip-off game.

Wow - blue witch, you are the credit queen! I have never seen such crafty exploitation of 0\\% loopholes.

Still, in order to get all that you must have the credit rating to end all credit ratings....!!!

The sad thing is, for every genius like yourself winning in the deal, there are literally millions who the banks are screwing.

dan - as long as you are sensible, and never, ever miss a payment (set up direct debits so you don't), and pay them off on time (ie before the horrific interest rate kicks in at the end of the period) your credit rating will actually improve...

Those who write on this professionally (eg martinthemoneysavingexpert) claim that doing it excessively damages your credit rating, but I've found the opposite. And I've been doing it for longer than he's been writing about it (now into my 6th or 7th year - although not all at that sort of level, as I was scared at first, so proceeded carefully).

There are plenty of people around doing it at high levels though - at least half a dozen on my encouragement

Hee - my Dad was one of those first Barclays customers who sent the card back.
I was 30-something before I got a credit card - and only then because I was travelling for work and had to pay for hotels.
What annoys me about the facts and figures when the media reports debts is that they calculate the debt divided by the national population. If only 63\\% have cards and 25\\% of those pay off every month, then the average debt per person is much higher than those figures show.

Queue at cash machines at Waterloo this morning - 15 to 20 people. Queue at ticket machine which accepts cash - 8 to 10 people.
Queue at ticket machine which accepts cards - 2 people.
Card works for me. I can't wait for the day they get rid of cash completely.

I had a Barclaycard back in 1970, and the minimum repayment was 15\\% per month, not the 2 or 3\\% you have now, so the interest didn't rack up so much. how do all those people who owe 30/40K sleep at night? I'm a pensioner now & get at least 1 offer of a card every week. I could build up loads of credit, and then just die! That would teach them to be a bit more choosy.

According to the radio this morning, mortgage lending has now hit the trillion mark, so you can add another billion to your figure.

This must be the most boring comment I have ever left on a blog...

Is it really so bad to buy small things with a card if you need them quickly and can't find a cashpoint?
I think you were a bit harsh DG.

Personally, I hate the idea of living on credit. I've only just got a credit card for the first time in years, and it's being used purely to build up the credit-score.

I've been "off the radar" for about a decade, and thus my credit-score was pretty much zero. I've spent the last two years building it up slowly, going into overdraft, paying it off, going back into it - basically establishing the record of borrowing and repayment that's so important to the poxy idea of credit-score.

I understand BW's methods, but to me it's just not something that appeals. I'm not knocking it, it's just not for me.

Mind you, I'm still one of the minority who don't have a mortgage either.

Actually here in the US the bank debit card has almost totally replaced cash. This looks exactly like a credit card, only it simply deducts the amount from your bank account, without any user fees. It's extremely convenient and one soon begins to use it for everything... even stingy diehard former check writers like myself.

As for actual credit card companies... I think they are white collar criminals of the worst sort. They still charge the high interest rates from 30 years ago, even though every other rate has been at record lows for the last 6 years.

These scurrilous white collar thugs even send credit cards to school children here now.

I'm another of those lazy cashless bastards I'm afraid. I don't even have to think about settling in full at the end of every month - my credit card bills are settled automatically by direct debit! So quite what my credit card company gets out of me I'm not sure. Well perhaps they make it on merchant transactions. For me paper/metal cash is just pointless given the benefits of plastic and fast chip&PIN readers. As soon as parking and pay-and-display meters and ice cream vans start taking credit cards there'll really be no need for cash.

The cost to small businesses of each and every card transaction is not insignificant and is reflected in the prices charged to all customers, cash or not, which is why many small businesses won't accept card payments (under a certain amount). I can only assume (rightly or wrongly) that those that never pay cash never use small businesses, and thus are quite happy about the domination of the multinational global chains in their community.

One advantage of credit cards, I found from firsthand experience recently, is that if the business you paid a deposit to for some furniture goes bust your deposit gets refunded to your account. I'd have lost it if I'd paid cash or with a debit card. It also only took going onto companies house website and printing out the page showing the company was in administration to get refunded. I think they're great and if Tescos want to give me £50 of vouchers every 3 months for using it that's fine by me. I'm one of the 25\\% who pay it off every month.

Two credit cards here - one with a broken chip in so I can't use it in the shops (I use it for online gubbins, and half the time it's in credit by a couple of quid) and an Amazon Mastercard procured solely for the purpose of buying a World Cup ticket.

I think I've only paid interest on them once, and that was because I cocked-up the repayment date.

Here in NZ I haven't used cash for many years now, and a good thing that has been!

I remember that for years Barclay's would not give their customers cheque guarantee cards, insisting that we all filled in our life histories & got a bloody Barclaycard instead!!!!!

That's when they lost me as a customer....

Has anyone else noticed that the little square chippy piece becomes fatigued and can pop out? Maybe this will be a new source of fraud?

i like the idea of cashless in the newsagent; soz mayte.

and sort the hanging indent in your bullets x

I have been using a credit card for purchasing almost everything and really in a way it helps me keep track of my expenses all in one account.

Plus I have an online id that allows me to check the billings whenever I want.

It would be fun to re-do this one












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