Strongly considering switching everything possible to CC, would make my personal accounting system much easier then the current
Might be obvious, but this is a US question I assume? These systems work differently in Europe.
Yes it is. Very American system. Here in Estonia, to get loans you need proven income and must show your expenses are low enough to allow taking on debt. In the US, you need a ton of history with credit cards and smaller loans I guess, till you can get a mortgage.
Paycheck and auto billing to the same checking account. A seprate general use checking accout thats linked to my debit card, so I have to explicitly move money out of the billing account to spend it. Plus a savings account.
CC is for emergency purchases between paychecks, online purchases, or the rare CC required transaction such as rental equipment (Home Depot for example requires a CC, no other options).
No. That won’t help you build your credit. Having credit available is surprisingly more important than using it. What you need is bills in your name, bank account, lease you’re on, recurring payments to something like a phone that is auto-pay, direct deposit paycheck, and 100% on-time payments.
Your credit card should be paid off entirely every month or twice-monthly.
That said, if there is no credit card fee, you can often benefit from credit card rewards. I would say use the credit card as much as you want, gaining “points,” as long as you can always pay it off.
That’s what I do. I know my monthly income, and everything gets put on the same card each month so I have a dead simple budget to keep track of. Plus all my payments are on virtual cards, so I don’t care about the number getting stolen in a data breach, they’re all locked by vendor. And I can shut off any virtual card any time I want if a company doesn’t want me to cancel.
Side bonus, I use the cash back as our xmas fund. I know friends that use the miles instead.
You may want to read more about how credit scores work and how to build credit in the US.
Reporting a payment (such as rent or utilities) to a credit bureau doesn’t always require charging it to a credit card or paying fees.Not sure how any of that works outside the US.
As I understand it,
Pro: if your card number is stolen and used, it’s much easier to recover the lost money (than with a debit card)
Con: it’s an additional company that is profiling you.
Not really.
What I do is I pay all of my bills that do not have fees attached to them for being paid with a credit card with a credit card.
I then pay off that credit card every month.
If it has a fee attached to it, like for instance my water bill, they want $3.95 to pay with a credit card, I just pay with direct bank transfer.
The goal is to save money. By doing this I get points back and I build my credit history of months and months and years of spending and paying, showing that I am a reliable consumer.
All told, the points and everything else on my credit cards nets me something like $300 a year, so it’s not groundbreaking, but my credit score is 837.
If you would have to pay for the privilege of using a credit card, then it’s not worth it to use a credit card.
