The Use of Credit Cards For Everyday Purchases
In your quest for discovering the perfect credit card for your use some advice you are sure to encounter is to never, never use your card for everyday purchases. You are not to use it for toilet paper, milk or dish soap.
Did I mention toilet paper?
With our economy in the dumps and unemployment figures rising rapidly all across the country, hard decisions must be made by ordinary citizens. For many of us such decisions involve instances where their credit should be used and those where they should not.
So when Should a Card be Used?
Prior to any words on when a credit card should not be used, let’s discuss those instances when it definitely should. The prevailing wisdom states that credit cards should be used to serve one of the following two purposes:
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As a means to build credit. There is no need to borrow money to purchase a certain item you want. On the other hand, you are attempting to build up your credit and that can’t be done without digging out that dusty old credit card from the depths of the desk drawer and putting it to use.
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A last-ditch option when an emergency comes along. Nobody actually expects their car to die in the middle of the freeway a thousand miles from home. Or a basement pipe to crack and spill nasty “stuff” all over their basement. (Not that I’m bitter.) So you might not always have that extra $500-$1,000 just lying around waiting for you to use. That’s where having a credit card to bail your outcomes in handy.
Why Using Your Credit Card for Everyday “Stuff” Isn’t Always a Bad Thing
Granted, you really shouldn’t use your card for toilet paper and soap. But life is not always that simple. I wish it was, but it’s not. There’s always the part where, whether you’re using a credit card or not, those everyday items cost money. And thanks to the dip in the economy and an employment rate at 9% and climbing, that money is in short supply for many, many families these days.
When given the choice between buying formula for the baby and not having any when the next feeding rolls around, you’re going to whip out that plastic without thinking twice. Believe me, I’ve been there. The money crunch hurts. But there’s an upside to using your credit card for the usual suspects that you’re going to enjoy if you did your homework when you picked your card in the first place, and that’s reward points program.
I’m not going to go into laborious detail over these reward points, because there are a multitude of methods credit card companies use to tally them up and certain usages that earn points and those that do not. Let us discuss here only the cards that earn points for buying stuff. Such points can be cashed in for numerous items. The more purchases you put on your credit card the more points are accumulated. You can even use your points to buy toilet paper and baby formula!