One can argue that you should use a credit card for all purchases you make in a given month, but if you are afraid to totally rely on a credit card I don’t blame you, after all, it takes discipline to keep the balance down enough so that you can pay it off entirely by the statement due date, otherwise interest starts to incur. If you want to try out baby steps and just use for Christmas shopping only, then you can start to see why using credit cards actually make plenty of financial sense.
Better Fraud Protection
When you use your debit card and your card gets compromised, your entire checking account could potentially get wiped out if you don’t catch the fraudulent charges in time. Sure, you can dispute them, but what if you have bills pending that need to be paid. The delay in getting the disputed charges returned to you could put your finances in jeopardy, so at least with a credit card if your information is taken and charges are made, at least they’ll remain pending until resolved without putting you on the hook.
Build Up Rewards
Probably the best reason to use a credit card and why it can be argued to be used for all purchases are the credit card rewards. Now I don’t know if say a victoria secret credit card would give the same perks as the other cards out there, but by making purchases that you would normally make anyways you can earn points to redeem for gift cards to restaurants, earn points for free hotel rooms, or just accumulate dollars that you would receive in a check back to you once a year, either way, not using a credit card is like essentially leaving free money on the table.
Improve Credit Score
You may that that credit score is not important, but if you ever want to buy or refinance your home, get a personal loan, car lease, or even employment, then credit score really does matter when it comes to showing if you are a responsible borrower or not. While it will not help your score to carry a balance over each month as that would add to your credit utilization, by charging and paying off each month it can not only improve your score with on-time payments, you can also gain credit line increases as well which will add to your overall credit available.
Simplifies Spending
It can be a lot to juggle cash, debit, credit, while staying within a budget and not going overboard. After all, if you continue to pile up the charges sooner or later you will have to pay them off, so why not simplify purchases with say a credit card. You can earn rewards while you are making purchases, give yourself a little grace period of paying back, and only have to track purchases on one account and statement to review line by line to see what you purchased the month prior to see any room for improvement.
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