Ingel Soong
While they are several reasons why using credit cards can be dangerous, here are 3 practical considerations why you should be using one.
If you have watched the movie “Catch Me If You Can” starring Leonardo Dicaprio, then you will be familiar with the real-life character he was acting out – Frank Abagnale Jr.
In the talk given at Google in 2017, Frank explained why he owns credit cards but never a debit card.
By using a credit card, he is spending Visa’s or Mastercard’s money but none of his own.
His money remains in the bank and continues to earn interest.
If someone charges $1 million dollar into his credit card, his personal liability is zero.
The bank will take care of it.
However, whenever you uses a debit card, everytime you use it you are exposing your money in your account.
When you are applying for a housing mortagage loan or a car loan, banks and financial instituitions will check your credit score.
It is a collaborative effort by all major finance instituitions in Singapore to aggregate your financial credit, spending and payment history.
The higher credit score you have, the lower you are deemed as a risk to the banks.
And everytime you pay off your credit card bills promptly, you increase your credit score.
When you use your debit card for 20 times a day for the next 50 years, you will still not raise your credit card score significantly.
Paying with credit cards can reap you rewards and cashbacks on money you are going to be spending anyway.
Sometimes, the cashback can be up on 1% on transportation, travel, restaurant dining, nightlife, entertainment, offline and online shopping or telcos.
If you are not reaping the rewards, you may be subsizing others who are.
Although there might be annual fees for some cards, most allow waivers, some up to 5-year – which is essentially equivalent to having no fees.
Do note the minimum credit card sign up age is 18 years old.
Whenever Ingel teaches, he believes students should be learning in the most efficient manner possible. The way he does it is to impart learning techniques that are simple to remember, and easy to a...
