My opinion on credit cards

I was asked for my opinion on credit cards - more precisely I was asked if I think they are good or bad. Well... that's a tough one. I hate credit cards because they charge you a lot of extra fees for using the money that you earn to but stuff. You are essentially paying for the privilege of spending your own money. But I have to put a little bit of good on them (even though it's actually a bad thing) in that you have to have them to buy things in a lot of places.

For example. I use PayPal for my online purchases. It's quick and easy and I've got some great things for Christmas presents this year. However, I bought a present for my brother from ebay and the person selling it required a verified PayPal account. No problem, I had that. Well, surprise! No, I didn't have one. Their idea of a verified account was one that had a credit card attached to it's mailing address on file. I was stuck, I had already bought the damn product and did not want to have to back out on buying it. My solution was to borrow my mom's credit card, use it to verify that yes I DO have a real address entered, and then I was let pay for the item that only accepted PayPal as a payment option.

So, are they good or bad? BAD!!! bad bad bad bad bad. I mentioned bad, right? I loathes the things. I know that I need to get one, it's a plot by the credit card companies that you can't function if you don't have one, but I recommend a secured card where you can only spend what you have put into the card. Sure there are 0% credit cards, but you know there's fees behind that 0% rate, right?

The sponsor of this post wants you to check out their site for credit card news and
credit card advice, but my advice? Don't get more cards than you absolutely HAVE to get and avoid the fancy ones that are too good to be true and trap you into a high monthly fee.

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The preceding post was paid for by CreditCards GB