Do You Really Need A Credit Card?
The answer is YES if
- you want to feel safe without cash
- you hate to keep bulk cash amount in your wallet
- you want to pay online subscription fee of your favorite tech magazine
- you want to enroll for some online course
- you want to pay examination fee for CFA
- you want to purchase credit on skype to make calls to your family and friends on mobile and land-lines
- you are interested in online shopping etc. etc.
Credit cards are becoming an important component of money spending activity in our daily life routine. Despite of all constraints, people are becoming more and more accustomed to credit cards usage. Keeping in view the emerging trend of using plastic money, banks and other merchants has started offering wide range of credit cards to not only individuals but their corporate clients as well.
What credit cards can do for you?
Credit card allows you to borrow and spend up to some specific amount of money i.e. called as credit limit. Your credit limit will be decided by the bank or merchant and it depends on your financial strength, taking into account other factors as well such as your income and credit history.
While choosing credit card, Make sure that you have chosen the one which suits your needs best.
There are many advantages a credit card can offer to their users:
- Credit cards are great way of paying for urgent needs.
- Most people use credit cards to pay off most of their monthly obligations.
- Credit card is most popular financial tool used for online shopping.
- Credit cards offer users different benefits like rewards, flexible credit plan and different discount deals.
How Credit Card works?
Credit makes the world go round. Even though one is in debt, one can still finance projects that will bring more money.
You will be sent credit card bill each month which describes list of transactions you have made using that credit card. After the bill being issued, you will be given period of more or less one month for clearing amount due on your part and after lapsing that time period interest will be charged on outstanding balance. Remember one thing that if you will clear the whole outstanding balance within given time frame, you would not have to pay any interest.
To see the length of interest-free grace period, you will have to check the terms and conditions as it may be different for each provider.
Does paying minimum repayment really help?
You will have a minimum repayment option which credit card providers give to their clients if they are unable to pay full amount you owe till due date. This minimum repayment amount is usually either a fixed cash amount, or a percentage of the outstanding balance.
You should keep repayment amount on top of this minimum repayment as if you could not pay it would result in late payment or even default notes on your credit report and with poor credit report you would find difficulty to take out loans, mortgages and other financing facilities in the future.
Though paying the minimum repayment does not actually contribute much to paying off your whole outstanding balance. It will clear any interest that has built on outstanding bill amount but only reduce the overall debt by a very little amount.
If you keep on paying only the minimum amount every time, clearing of even a small debt would take years. So, it is always recommended to repay as much amount as you can.