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My CU pays 2.25%, no fees, no balance restrictions (except at the upper end, around $50k.) I don't bother with it, since I don't keep static money in checking. But someone spending/paying off/repeat might.
Clearly, you have your own ideas about how to manage your spending. But it does seem to occupy an awful lot of your time; I am not sure the average working person with a family wants to spend a lot of time "managing" household spending so intensively. Use the card, pay it off when the bill comes, use the time for something else.
it really occupies no time . literally a minute maybe a day . at this point even our investing is 30 seconds a week unless i decide to do my fun day trading but i enjoy that .
i have every thing centralized in one screen with fidelity and in a click i can pay bills , buy , sell investments or move money . it is really no effort at all using fidelity full view . . in fact i have everything automated so all bills get paid with or without my input . we travel a lot so i don't always get the chance to do my little quirky things . there is nothing i can think of that requires manual input on our end unless we choose to .
My CU pays 2.25%, no fees, no balance restrictions (except at the upper end, around $50k.) I don't bother with it, since I don't keep static money in checking. But someone spending/paying off/repeat might.
Clearly, you have your own ideas about how to manage your spending. But it does seem to occupy an awful lot of your time; I am not sure the average working person with a family wants to spend a lot of time "managing" household spending so intensively. Use the card, pay it off when the bill comes, use the time for something else.
I’d have to agree with Mathjak it doesn’t take much time at all to manage. What might take some time is getting up to speed on rewards programs and how to operate at max efficiency but that doesn’t need to occur all at once either. It’s something I found that builds over time and becomes natural
in the beginning we did spend quite a bit of time reading the articles by the points guy so we can learn the lay of the land . i never imagined there was so much to know .
once you get involved with all these rewards programs and trading partners it can get very complex . but you can save thousands on trips .
i just learned about saving the fuel surcharges on domestic flights with foreign airlines that are doing stop overs here ,. there are no fuel surcharges as they are paid by the international travelers on the flight . a good portion of the ticket price is fuel .
so there really is quite a bit to know when you use the travel rewards .
it really occupies no time . literally a minute maybe a day . at this point even our investing is 30 seconds a week unless i decide to do my fun day trading but i enjoy that .
I probably spend about 15 minutes at the beginning of the month paying bills - but that's because when I set up the credit card payments I also take a moment to check over the pending and posted charges on each card and record any that are for online purchases where no sales tax was paid in an Excel spreadsheet. Then when tax time rolls around, all I have to do is add up those charges, and then I can present my accountant with complete documentation of how much online spending I did over the course of the year. I figure 15 minutes/month to significantly decrease the time and energy I need to spend during tax season is a god tradeoff!
(Now I need to decide if the reduced tax-season pain that would come from setting up a donor-advised fund for my charitable giving is worth the points and miles tradeoff I'd be making by not charging those charitable donations to my cards. Decisions, decisions!)
we have had some frauds over the decades so i like looking daily when i can plus i do get alerts via e-mail .
fidelity full view tracks all our spending with no input from me . not a penny leaves without it counting . some things are auto coded , if i wanted i could manually correct or add things that are not coded automatically .
then i can get reports on spending and categories but i have no need to do that . .
all i really want is a total and to see where we stand at any point in time . being retired we try to stay within the goal posts we set each year ..
we have had some frauds over the decades so i like looking daily when i can plus i do get alerts via e-mail .
I get text message alerts for all the purchases most likely to be fraudulent (gas station charges, online charges, international charges) sent to my phone, as well as email alerts. Plus any fraud alerts the credit cards company sends out, of course. So I don't feel like I need to log in frequently to watch for that stuff (although of course every card does get checked at least monthly). I've picked up a few fraud charges via those alert texts that the bank's fraud department didn't recognize as fraudulent, so they are worthwhile. American Express and Chase in particular are great with their notifications.
i had posted about the fact i received an alert while sitting at my computer about a bitcoin purchase on a debit card which we never used any where but the lobby at our bank so i can get a direct deposited check out in cash .
they charged 2200.00 . i have my bank across the street so they killed the transaction and notified the business it was fraudulent
that is my point . i would like to see the total credit card debt vs that debt which is not paid in full each month and restarted again over fresh . i think we are seeing a big spike in usage for rewards and not actual debt that is not paid and re added new each month . many of us are throwing everything we can on our cards but are not carrying a balance .
This. My statement balance is $1,000 (+/- $200) a month almost every month so it could appear that I don't use the card and pay a minimum payment when in reality I pay it in full every month and mostly have the same recurring charges. A snapshot in time surely can't differentiate a statement balance as a debt vs one that is paid in full every month. Like you said, usage is up so statement balances are up too.
I have not met anyone who messed up financially before and who has changed their behavior to the better. NOT ONE.
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