Personal Finance Advice

You can get through life without a credit card.  No matter what anyone else tells you, you don’t have to seek out credit the second you become an adult and you don’t have to spend the rest of your life desperately trying to improve your credit score so you can qualify for a better credit card.  In fact, there are some people who operate solely on a cash basis and find that this is the best method for them in order to keep their personal finances under control.

That being said, there is certainly something incredibly convenient about having a credit card available.  You can delay payments on a purchase or instead have a credit card in place for emergencies.  If you manage your credit card debt wisely, it can be a very useful tool indeed.

When it comes right down to it, though, do you really need a credit card?

In theory, you shouldn’t need a credit card at all when it comes to getting your hands on the things you want to buy.  If you absolutely need a credit card in order to put food on the table or gas in your car then that’s considered an accurate indication that you’re in trouble financially.  The things that most people purchase on credit cards - such as niceties that they may not otherwise indulge in if they didn’t have the credit available - in theory should be purchased only after money has been saved up to pay for them in full.  Using this idea, credit cards then become short-term loans and aren’t really a necessity of life as long as you handle your finances well.

Is it possible to exist in today’s society without a credit card? Absolutely.  Is it common for people to choose not to get credit cards even though they don’t have bad credit? It’s not too terribly common.  Most people who qualify for credit cards have at least one unless they have made the conscious effort to shun credit.  A good portion of people simply assume that it’s completely normal to obtain at least one credit card, and if “normal” is what everyone else is doing then this is certainly true.

You don’t really need a credit card.  Not having a credit card will make some things a little more difficult, such as renting a car or reserving a hotel room.  It helps if you have a debit card for these types of things because pulling a big wad of cash out of your wallet may raise some eyebrows.

In fact, if you come to rely on credit cards as your main means of affording the things you want to buy then the exact opposite becomes true: You shouldn’t have a credit card because it’s keeping you from managing your personal finances effectively.