[toyg]

Uk here, I use credit cards for everything. Used wisely, consumer credit is incredibly useful. Example: bought a 4k motorbike, dealer finance or savings drawdown would have cost me hundreds; slapped it all on an 18-months 0% card and am now slowly repaying it on my own schedule, at no extra cost, while happily riding the thing.

[sbisson]

Exactly; with a credit card paid off monthly by direct debit and an interest paying current account, you're earning interest on your cash and not paying any on your purchases. What's not to like getting what's basically free money with a little bit of no-brainer arbitrage?

[toyg]

> an interest paying current account

What is this unicorn you speak of...? :) jk, I know some exist, I've just been irrationally faithful to a bank that probably does not deserve it anymore (coop)...

(But I keep my savings in an account that offsets against my mortgage, so I'm effectively getting a similar deal in practice by not accruing interest on that.)

[gambiting]

Yeah of course, I do the same thing - when I said I use mine "very rarely" I meant that I use it for things like buying laptops or other expensive things, to use the 0% interest period. I just don't know anyone who actually uses it for day to day purchases from amazon and such, I just use my debit card for that.

[88]

Using a credit card in this way could be negatively impacting your credit rating.

You can be dinged both for having credit and not using it in a given month, as well as exceeding a certain threshold (~10%?) of your credit limit.

[gambiting]

I have two credit cards, one of them I haven't used in 5 years at all, the other I use as described, and according to Credit Karma my credit rating is 690 our of 700. We just remortgaged the house too without any issue.

So yeah, I don't think I care too much about my credit rating at all, it doesn't seem to be affected by this in the sligtest.

[88]

Fair enough if it doesn’t impact your day to day, but it will definitely impact others.

Also worth noting Credit Karma uses TransUnion which is only one of the big three rating agencies, and arguably the least important compared to Equifax and Experian.