I hate them they are the devil and I swore I would never ever have another one....but I am now eating my own words.
DH and I decided last night to get a lowes credit card to help out with some of the house expenses. We haven't gotten our tax return back yet and we had planned to use that for our flooring and paint. So we got one with a 1,000 dollar limit and we get 6 months no intrest. We are going to pay it off with our tax return. DH knows I am anti credit card so I hope this doesn't bite me in the butt. The last credit card I had I was young and dumb. I am hoping now that I am more mature, more financially stable, and more money concious it will all be okay.
how many credit cards do you have? Do you have a system or anything to make sure they get paid off in certain amount of time?
Re: credit cards
The Daily Nugget
Cycle 12, IUI #1 - 33m post wash 10/15/10 = BFN
Cycle 13, IUI #2 - 15m post wash 11/16/10 = BFP, missed m/c, D&C 1/3/11
Cycle 15 - 18, IUI #3-6 = BFN
Cycle 20, IUI #7 = BFP!, missed m/c 9/14, D&C
DE-IVF Aug. 2012: ER 8/30 11R, 7M, 4F; ET 9/4 returned 2
Beta 9/18 #1-820, #2-1699, #3-7124
10/1 1st u/s measuring right on track, 125 bpm
We have one and only one. All the bills, schooling and Phil's extended dental work (approx 10k this year [thankfully all covered by our work plans]) go on them. It's affiliated with the big Canadian airline, and we've already flown twice for free with the points earned. Right now we have enough for two tickets anywhere in the world, but I'm holding out for two first class tickets anywhere. =P We'll probably use it to fly to England in November or I really want to go back to Hawaii sometimes in '13 while I'm off for mat leave. This will be the first time in years that I can take advantage of off season travel deals!
edit: I should add that we try to pay it off in full each month. When we're waiting for a cheque from the insurance people or have Phil's quarterly tuition fee on it, it can take a little longer.
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog
We have 4 credit cards (I think? Ha, that's bad). One through each of our banks (though we don't use mine anymore and should probably close it), a Home Depot one (for the 6 months no interest to pay) and an HBC one (Hudson's Bay Company, our only Master Card) that we got mostly to get an extra 10% off a large purchase.
We mostly use our main CC as a convenience card. While we're carrying a bit of a balance right now, it should be paid off by the time little Chewy gets here. We mostly use it for the rewards (1% cash back).
We'll just not tell H about this little fact, m'kay?
We each have three--BoA, Target and AmEx. We only use Target at Target (for the discount) and AmEx is for car rentals b/c of the extra insurance AmEx provides. We don't use AmEx or Target often.
In any case, our bills are set to pay the entire balance automatically on or before the due dates. We get points with BoA, so every once in a while we get to apply the points to pay a small portion of the cc bill.
We have three in total - 1 each in the UK (DH has Amex and mine is HSBC), and 1 US$ card. The US card is only used for purchases back in the US, and it still has a US address attached to it for ease of use. Most of our big expenses go on DH's Amex for the points, and I use mine for more expensive one-off purchases I make. We pay them off each month in full.
Cecilia arrived 12 October 2012
I have three and DH has two.
The only card of mine that has a balance is a Discover that I almost have paid off from stuff we bought when we first got our house. It has great rewards and 5% cash back.
Jason uses his for daily purchases like gas, lunch, etc. and pays off the balance every month for the rewards.
We have 4 and a couple of dept store ones. The dept store ones, we used once or twice for the % off your entire purchase, but paid those off immediately. The other 4 (yes I know crazy), I had to use when DH was in school, and I was the only one working. Between extra expenses with twins (when we thought there was only one baby not two), the crazy expensive forumula that they ended up being on, and other things, I had racked up some debt. However 2 of them were paid off by last July, and we just recently paid off the other two. Going forward, if we use a CC (3 have been put away, and we only carry one), the balance will be paid off that month.
We have a joint card and we each have a personal card leftover from before we were married. But we hardly ever use our personal cards anymore. We use the joint card as a convenience card for most of our expenses and pay them off in full each month. That way, we can just download the bill for each month and easily look at whether or not we were on track with our budget.
Credit cards are not the devil if they are used responsibly - just don't treat them as disposable income. I'm sure you're better able to handle it now.
Baby #2: Surprise BFP 9.19.12, EDD 5.24.13, natural m/c 10.19.13 at 9w