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We didn't think to do that since we don't travel much and when we do we stay closer to home. We didn't sign up for text alerts or anything like that. A quick phone call and I was able to start using the card again. Not too big of a deal but it cost us about 30 minutes since we had stopped to get gas.

I've had my ATM card 4 or 5 times in the past 10 years. CC probably 3 times the past 2 years

All these stories make me glad I listened to Dave Ramsey and have no credit cards.

Dave Ramsey is wrong IMHO. If you don't use a credit card you're leaving money on the table. I use cash for small purchases and my AMEX for nearly everything else and at the end of the year I often have nearly $1k in rewards. I've seen people that use personal cards for business purposes have 5X that in rewards. It takes discipline but as long as you pay them off at the end of the month you will come out money ahead.

lfinsr wrote:Dave Ramsey is wrong IMHO. If you don't use a credit card you're leaving money on the table. I use cash for small purchases and my AMEX for nearly everything else and at the end of the year I often have nearly $1k in rewards. I've seen people that use personal cards for business purposes have 5X that in rewards. It takes discipline but as long as you pay them off at the end of the month you will come out money ahead.

About one in a thousand survive a dance with the devil unscathed.

You think they haven't spent millions on shrewd marketing to be the winner in these battles.

I think your statistics are a bit off. Using a credit card is not the mark of the devil. I will not use a debit card when ordering things online, since if the vendor is hacked, the funds come out of my checking account. This happened to me once, and although it was ultimately resolved, until that happens you're out of the money. My credit cards are almost always paid off monthly. Under certain circumstances, I'll let it ride a month or two. MANY people use credit cards in this responsible manner. If you have self control, it can be an effective financial tool.

Millions of people use credit cards responsibly. Some people don't. If you can't, then you are correct in not having them. But don't paint those that are responsible with credit as "dancing with the devil".

Oh, and I forgot to mention, that the responsible use of credit cards is one of the best ways to improve your credit rating. If you don't have a sizeable unused credit line, your rating is gonna suck!

LDB415 wrote:All these stories make me glad I listened to Dave Ramsey and have no credit cards.

After my wife and I graduated we went with the no CC and paid cash for everything for years. That ended up biting us in the ass when we tried to buy a house. Even though I could put 20% down it was still cheaper for us to do a Federal loan and pay PMI for a cheaper interest rate. We had a debt to income ratio of 5-10% This was bc we didn't have enough credit bc I paid everything in cash including cars

cajunautoxer wrote:

LDB415 wrote:All these stories make me glad I listened to Dave Ramsey and have no credit cards.

After my wife and I graduated we went with the no CC and paid cash for everything for years. That ended up biting us in the ass when we tried to buy a house. Even though I could put 20% down it was still cheaper for us to do a Federal loan and pay PMI for a cheaper interest rate. We had a debt to income ratio of 5-10% This was bc we didn't have enough credit bc I paid everything in cash including cars

That'll teach ya to be responsible. ( But it's exactly what I was talking about. )

sjfcontrol wrote:I think your statistics are a bit off. Using a credit card is not the mark of the devil. I will not use a debit card when ordering things online, since if the vendor is hacked, the funds come out of my checking account. This happened to me once, and although it was ultimately resolved, until that happens you're out of the money. My credit cards are almost always paid off monthly. Under certain circumstances, I'll let it ride a month or two. MANY people use credit cards in this responsible manner. If you have self control, it can be an effective financial tool.

Millions of people use credit cards responsibly. Some people don't. If you can't, then you are correct in not having them. But don't paint those that are responsible with credit as "dancing with the devil".

I like the protections better with CCs for online ordering. I understand that some cannot avoid the allure of not paying off the balance monthly but we always have. They used to call people like us "non-revolvers" (humor intended)

We seem to have our CREDIT card compromised every other year or so. No big deal. Cancel the card, get a replacement (AMEX is particularly good about sending replacement cards overnight), dispute the charges (the biggest inconvenience) and move on.

It's why we NEVER use DEBIT cards.

Our ATM cards have their debit/charge limits set to $0.00. The only place those cards can be used is at an ATM. If you have an "ATM card" in your wallet, it's likely that card is also a debit card. Just call your bank and ask them to set the separate debit/charge limit to zero. Then use a CHARGE card and pay the bill in full at the end of the month. It's the same thing as using a debit card, only safer and less of a headache. You don't lose access to the money in your bank account when (not if, when) your card is compromised.

The banks can worry about fraud. Of course I take prudent precautions to avoid getting compromised, but if the banks want to earn their vig, I'm happy to let them worry about how to prevent fraud on their devices.

Just my $0.02

Seems to me most if not all of these stories about credit cards reflect very favorably on the credit card companies -- specifically, when something bad happens to an individual's credit card, it seems to be detected fairly quickly and the cardholder is not out any thing other than the nuisance of changing to a new card. I can see the company not being interested in burning lots of time and money tracking down each offender, especially since many of them are states or countries away.

My wife and I have had maybe half-a-dozen "incidents" over the years, and the biggest problem we encountered was having to call all the businesses we have autopay with. We keep more than one card so if the main one goes south, we can still pay with the other(s). I am impressed with how easy the CC company makes it for us to handle these incidents, and how closely and quickly they track fraudulent purchases. We did have to change our card twice in two weeks once because the first one was used in France, and the replacement was used in Italy (interestingly the company told us the thieves used physical cards, not just the number). No skin off our nose in either instance. Just yesterday the company detected an unusual use at Dollar General here in our hometown, what seemed to be a larger amount in a place we usually spend a few dollars in, so they declined the sale and sent us email notification. Turns out my wife did her annual binge buying stocking stuffers and Christmas decorations! She just paid some other way and one phone call to the CC company cleared things up with one phone call. Again a nuisance, but good to know that it was being tracked that closely.

I find it far easier to track expenses and do business with a CC, versus checks or cash. On the occasions where I got gipped using checks or cash, nobody offered to wipe those off my account! And frequent flyer miles add up pretty fast when you pay for everything by a CC with a rewards program. Heck, twice we paid for most of a used car with a credit card. That racked up some miles.

The business I work for has most of its clients on CC autopay now, and they are far more reliable payers than most of the cash and check people. When the Target and Home Depot hacks we had a little bit of work to do to change to new numbers, but still less trouble than any other method.

Spend what you can afford, and pay every month.

By the way -- if you do go wild and get more debt than you know what to do with, if you sober up and face it instead of ignoring the phone calls and letters, you can often negotiate a settlement with the CC company that will relieve you of a significant amount of it. Your credit rating won't necessarily be pretty, but it can be done. Just be aware that whatever amount is forgiven by the CC company is counted as income by the IRS and you will have to pay taxes on it. When I was preparing taxes for others that was often a nasty surprise for folks.

The biggest problem is that CC fraud/theft is almost never prosecuted. As with everything else that is wrong with society, the hard working honest people that pay their way foot the bill for all of the scum losers.

lfinsr wrote:Dave Ramsey is wrong IMHO. If you don't use a credit card you're leaving money on the table. I use cash for small purchases and my AMEX for nearly everything else and at the end of the year I often have nearly $1k in rewards. I've seen people that use personal cards for business purposes have 5X that in rewards. It takes discipline but as long as you pay them off at the end of the month you will come out money ahead.

Dave's point is that you're never going to get rich on the cash back and frequent flyer miles. He has a net worth of about $55 million, so I'm not going to argue the point.

The CC companies arent being generous. They care very little about fraud as it is the consumers who are paying.