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Using Your Credit Card Wisely
By: Peter Kenny
Keeping your credit card debts in check should be your sole aim in life if you
want to live a financially viable life, because if you don’t the fall out of
having a lot of debt on your credit cards can start to affect other parts of
your life.
As much as credit cards are a handy spending tool, they are double the trouble
if they are not taken care of and can give you problems that you could never
have imagined when you first applied for the card.
Though credit cards are becoming a must have tool to have in this day and age,
to book things such as concert tickets and theatre tickets over the phone or to
buy goods at cheaper prices on the Internet, what you have top remember is that
a credit card has a higher than normal APR attached to it, than other debt such
as Personal Loans and Mortgages.
There are though a few simple and common sense practices that you can apply to
your credit card and the way that you spend on it.
Firstly you can try and be a little choosier on the purchases that you make, we
all know how handy the credit card is to use on purchases that you don’t have
the ready cash for, but to buy goods that your income can simply support is a
bad practice, as it will only lead you in to debt interest charges being added
to the already obscene cost of the item and by the time that you have eventually
paid it off, there’s a new model out and the one you have costs less than half
the price new. Lesson: Avoid temptation.
This first practice could then lead to you only being able to afford to pay the
minimum payments to your credit card, this has to be avoided also as it will
leave you paying off debt for many a year and for goods again that are either
past there sell by date or already in the back of your council refuge truck.
Lesson: Pay more than the Minimum Payment.
Always check your credit card statement for any phantom payments taken from your
card, though not a regular occurrence, mistakes can happen and it will also let
you catch any fraud being applied to your credit card account. Lesson: Don’t pay
for something you haven’t bought.
There are few things that the credit card issuer will also change about your
card and they can do so when they please, one is to raise your APR, if they do
so be prepare to move to a credit card issuer who can offer you a better deal.
Lesson: Switch to save.
Another is the raising of your credit limit, again when you are checking your
statement check this as well, as the hope of the credit card company is that you
get the false security of being better off than you are and that if the credit
card issuer says I can have it, then I must be able to afford to spend it.
Lesson: Stay within your means.
Keep on top of your credit card and don’t let it get on top of you, by doing
this you will master the card, rather than the MasterCard getting the better of
you.
About the Author:
Peter Kenny is a writer for creditcards-gb For additional articles and an
extensive resource for everything about credit cards, please visit us at
http://www.creditcards-gb.co.uk and http://www.creditcards2go4.com |
