Originally Posted By: jhellwig
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: jhellwig
Chasing the cash back and points will bite you in the butt eventually. It isn't worth playing their game. They are not going to loose money by letting you use their money. It will always cost you.
The problem here is that you have a forest and trees problem. In the aggregate, about 2/3's of the people carry a balance. Those are the ones the credit card companies are targeting. The other 1/3 that pay off their balance every month are the ones they refer to as deadbeats. If you are disciplined to pay off your credit card every month, you can take advantage of their system. They do lose money by letting you use their money. To them it's a numbers game, a certain number of people they'll make a lot of money on, some they will make a little and some they will lose a little. But overall, they'll make money. That's the nature of business. No business is ever batting 1000. Most people just don't really understand it so they think something else is up. They don't actually lose that much money anyway, it's the merchant that pays a percentage per transaction. It's actually the people who pay cash who are subsidizing those that use credit.
You can think you are going to be on the winning end all you want but all it takes is one time for something bad to happen and all that money you made is gone in a flash. One way or another everyone with succumb to an impulse and wind up on the loosing end. Might not happen with credit cards but it will happen in some way shape or form. It is a multi billion dollar industry to figure out how to separate people from their money. No one is immune. Life happens.
The 100% fool proof way to never loose money to a credit card company is to never have a credit card.
I have tried to play the game and lost. Luckily I wasn't in that deep. My wife kept insisting on playing the game till one day she looked and saw that the credit card bill was bigger than what was in the checking account. We had the money in savings to cover it but that was all it took to convince her.
Now if I could just get those losers to stop calling me to reduce my credit card interest when I have no credit cards or debt other than the mortgage life would be good.
A lot of people here think they're superhuman and not subject to basic human instinct and tendencies. For almost all people, having a credit/debit card means you will spend more money on average than people using cash. Card companies had a genius idea to send people a little money back at the end of the year to keep them engaged in the process. It's little different than the IRS sending you back a little of your own money at the end of the year. The scheme keeps the majority of people happy because they don't really understand what's going on.
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: jhellwig
Chasing the cash back and points will bite you in the butt eventually. It isn't worth playing their game. They are not going to loose money by letting you use their money. It will always cost you.
The problem here is that you have a forest and trees problem. In the aggregate, about 2/3's of the people carry a balance. Those are the ones the credit card companies are targeting. The other 1/3 that pay off their balance every month are the ones they refer to as deadbeats. If you are disciplined to pay off your credit card every month, you can take advantage of their system. They do lose money by letting you use their money. To them it's a numbers game, a certain number of people they'll make a lot of money on, some they will make a little and some they will lose a little. But overall, they'll make money. That's the nature of business. No business is ever batting 1000. Most people just don't really understand it so they think something else is up. They don't actually lose that much money anyway, it's the merchant that pays a percentage per transaction. It's actually the people who pay cash who are subsidizing those that use credit.
You can think you are going to be on the winning end all you want but all it takes is one time for something bad to happen and all that money you made is gone in a flash. One way or another everyone with succumb to an impulse and wind up on the loosing end. Might not happen with credit cards but it will happen in some way shape or form. It is a multi billion dollar industry to figure out how to separate people from their money. No one is immune. Life happens.
The 100% fool proof way to never loose money to a credit card company is to never have a credit card.
I have tried to play the game and lost. Luckily I wasn't in that deep. My wife kept insisting on playing the game till one day she looked and saw that the credit card bill was bigger than what was in the checking account. We had the money in savings to cover it but that was all it took to convince her.
Now if I could just get those losers to stop calling me to reduce my credit card interest when I have no credit cards or debt other than the mortgage life would be good.
A lot of people here think they're superhuman and not subject to basic human instinct and tendencies. For almost all people, having a credit/debit card means you will spend more money on average than people using cash. Card companies had a genius idea to send people a little money back at the end of the year to keep them engaged in the process. It's little different than the IRS sending you back a little of your own money at the end of the year. The scheme keeps the majority of people happy because they don't really understand what's going on.
