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[guessingo]

Do not carry a balance on a credit card. The new interest rates are ridiculous. Never spend more than you can pay attention off each month. If you do that it doesnt matter what you get. If you dont trust yourself to do that dont get the one. Never go into credit card debt. It can ruin you.

I am 40 and I auto pay my cards evey month. My expenses are always what i can afford. At the high interest rates you can easily end up permanently paying interest. The interest will be more than you actually spent. Poor people and young people just starting out fall in this trap.

They really should teach this in high school....

[MaximumZero]

Meph: I've never seen a place not accept cash. Ever. Where the hell were you?

[Sheb]

Ahah, over here, credit cards seems to be mostly about buying stuff over the internet.

[BFEL]

They really should teach this in high school....

For me they actually did.
Mostly I learned the importance of building credit here, as not having any means being unable to say...rent a car if yours breaks down, as well as other things.

Just feel I should restate once again that YES I fully intend to pay off anything IMMEDIATELY.
I'm no fool with money, and being in debt, whether in a financial sense or otherwise is something nigh unconscionable for me.

Basically I asked for advice on this kind of thing because I can't stand to not get the absolute best possible "deal" out of pretty much anything I do.
So while I don't plan to ever pay any interest or such due to paying it, I know life has this tendency to fuck with you really hard sometimes, so I figure there's no reason NOT to try and get the least possible interest/no minimum payments/etc.

And as Sappho has exhaustively covered the U.S. is utterly silly with credit stuffs.
I haven't seen a place that utterly WON'T accept cash, but given how worthless our currency is becoming, it wouldn't truly surprise me

[Meph]

Meph: I've never seen a place not accept cash. Ever. Where the hell were you?

One example would be New York, a bus company to Niagra Falls was selling tickets online, but had no counter on any bus station, and you couldnt buy the ticket on the bus itself. Only way was to pre-book it with a credit card online.

Lots and lots of other examples are anything you can buy online. Book a flight? In Germany there is a thing called "Lastschrift". I buy a ticket, and the airline books the money from my account. You buy at Amazon? Same thing, no credit card needed. But that doesnt work in other places of the world.

[Thief^]

Lots and lots of other examples are anything you can buy online. Book a flight? In Germany there is a thing called "Lastschrift". I buy a ticket, and the airline books the money from my account. You buy at Amazon? Same thing, no credit card needed. But that doesnt work in other places of the world.

Here we normally use debit cards for that, or very occasionally "Direct Debit" (paypal uses this if you directly add a bank account, for example). Direct Debit is more often used for bills, rather than purchases.

Credit cards are only necessary if you're actively trying to get into debt (aka "build a credit rating/history"). Actually using one over a debit card or loan (as appropriate) is just silly. Still, they're better than the payday loan companies!

[breadman]

All the cards (or bank accounts) I've seen that have a monthly fee offer some kind of "advantage", which clearly works out as being worth less than the fee, or the bank would lose money

Banks often get money by charging usage fees from the merchant, often something like 2.5% + 35¢.  (That's why some places don't accept cards for totals under about $5; the fee is greater than their profit margin for small amounts.)  Some of the best cards give part of that back to you, but you might need a good credit score to be granted one without an annual fee.

Credit cards are only necessary if you're actively trying to get into debt (aka "build a credit rating/history"). Actually using one over a debit card or loan (as appropriate) is just silly. Still, they're better than the payday loan companies!

Most of our bank cards work as either credit or debit.  In practice, credit is slightly easier for the customer, but debit is cheaper for the merchant.  In my case, it's a separate credit card that offers cash back, so that one gets used much more often.