FormlessOne: "What good is math to me?", they say...

TwowheelinTim: The comments in this thread make it look like the average Farker is fiscally responsible. There are a couple explanations that come to mind, but I'm going with "the average Farker is fiscally responsible". It's good to see you have ignored the lessons and examples your family, friends, and government have been providing all these years.

Yeah. Paid off my mortgage, paid off & canceled my credit cards, and my reward? A lowered credit score, because, hey, I clearly won't make a bank any money if they give me a line of credit. Never mind that I have an 80+ spread between credit scores depending on which agency I ask, or that one agency still thinks I work at CIGNA, a company at which I haven't worked in 18 goddamned years.

No, I'm supposed to curate my credit score because it's increasingly used to measure my value as a person, instead of merely indicate how much of a profit margin I'd give a creditor. Fark that.

Madman drummers bummers: gunsmack: FDR Jones: I don't carry a balance, but I also don't live a lifestyle that is prone to huge surprise bills, i.e., no house, car, kids, etc. No medical issues. I'm also liquid AF because I keep way more money in my checking account than is necessary.

Liquidity is nice, but checking pays less interest than stuffing it under your mattress. Grab a few CDs (which don't pay much more) or bonds if you have a surplus.

I used to do CD ladders: get a 3-month, a 6-month, a 9-month if you can get it, a 1-year, and so on. Every time one of them matures, buy the longest-term one you can get with the proceeds. You're never more than 3 months away from a maturity if you have an emergency (loss of job, hospital bills, that sort of thing), and you're generally getting more interest than with a savings account.

I quit doing that when CD rates dropped to "are you farking kidding me" levels. Bonds might be the way to go with that sort of thing now, but I don't know much about the bond market.

It's not easy to find safe places to stash bucks and still beat inflation, anymore. The powers that be are, intentionally or not, encouraging debt and spending rather than saving. And most of the people are more than happy to oblige.

Public Savant: Whe the fark don't americans just use debit cards?!

You only spend what you have.
What's not to get?

Harry_Seldon: Nogale: I'm always tempted to fill out an application using the dog's information and her paw print signature and see if they'll send her a card. She's not a minor in dog years. Would that be fraud?

Is your dog capable of making informed consent?

Harry_Seldon: paulleah: Harry_Seldon: I lived an extravagant lifestyle funded by credit cards for years. Then I lucked into buying house t just the right time. House prices skyrocketted in SoCal, so I started to use the equity as a piggy bank. Then, my income tripled over the next few years, so I was able to spend more money on credit cards. At one point, I bought a $10k motorcycle on a credit card. I saw the house bubble burst coming, so I sold my house in 2006 for a $250k profit, and paid off my student loans and credit cards, and still walked away with over $100k, so I moved to Portland. I decided to not work for a couple of years, and blew the $100k and ran up another $20k in credit card debt., so I had to get a job.

And what did we learn?

I kind of screwed myself, and would have been retired early. Now, I am white knuckling to retirement, but I knocked my net worth from -$70k to +$425k in the last six years thanks to a god send of a job, and living in a less expensive boring city...maybe a little more maturity. I got really lucky. The Ph.d. in a science didn't hurt either.

cygnusx13: I should also say:

Most Americans can't read or write in their native language

Most Americans can't find Iraq on a map

Most Americans believe in creation myths

Most Americans can't name 10 elements on the periodic table

Most Americans have never travelled outside of the United States

That they can't or won't read a CC statement shocks me!

prickly pete v2: Madman drummers bummers: Public Savant: Whe the fark don't americans just use debit cards?!

You only spend what you have.
What's not to get?

1. As someone else pointed out, debit cards lack the fraud and purchase protection of credit cards. You get bad charges on a debit card, you're screwed. You get bad charges on a credit card, you're out maybe $50. Maybe nothing.

2. Every time I use my credit card, I get 1.5% of the amount back in cash. Since I pay the balance in full, and there's no annual fee, they're paying me to use the credit card. Actual free (to me) money, no strings attached.

3. Last I heard, it costs merchants more to run a debit card than a credit card, so it sucks for merchants, and for everyone else when they have to raise prices to compensate.

4. It sucks, but emergencies do happen. And of course, being fiscally responsible, you have three months' worth of expenses socked away in an interest-bearing account to cover them, right? Great. But this emergency will cost you six months' worth of expenses. Now what do you do? Yeah, sometimes it's nice to be able to carry a balance if circumstances warrant.

5. It's dead easy to keep track of your spending, what with being able to download statement and recent activity into an xls or quicken file. You also need to track your expenses if you only want to "spend what you have" using a debit card. With the same amount of effort, and less self-control than it takes to drag your ass into work each day, you still only spend what you have.

So that's why this American doesn't use a debit card. Unless something changes several of the above points, I would never use a debit card.

I recently switched banks to one (Nicolet Bank - based in northeast WI) that will pay 3.00% interest on balances up to $15000 if you use your debit card at least 10 times a month. And the grocery store I frequent (Woodman's) doesn't take credit cards, so it works out beautifully.