I treat it like a debit card. I don’t put more on the credit card than I have in my bank account. And I don’t keep a running balance each month. I pay off the card bill each month so I don’t pay credit card fees.
Just because your credit card limit is $5000, doesn’t mean you should load it to the max if you only have $1000 in your bank account. I recognize that people sometimes need to do something like this to pay bills, but as a general rule you should do everything in your power to just treat it like a debit card and you won’t be in debt.
Also, I know you didn’t ask this… But I also tend to use my credit card instead of my debit card because I get cash back rewards points for using it (unlike with a debit card). And I’m the US (not sure about other countries), it tends to be much easier to dispute a fraudulent charge to your credit card than your debit card. Because when something is debited from your bank account, it’s almost immediately gone. But when you get a charge to your credit card, it’s kind of like a mini loan, so money is not immediately deducted from your bank account.
Here in Germany you can get back money that somebody took via direct debit, but not if you transfer it yourself. And many supermarkets use direct debit at their own risk after some automated risk analysis, because it has lower fees than girocard/maestro/vpay. (They extract the bank code from the card and print a form for direct debit authorization with the receipt printer)
I treat it like a debit card. I don’t put more on the credit card than I have in my bank account. And I don’t keep a running balance each month. I pay off the card bill each month so I don’t pay credit card fees.
Just because your credit card limit is $5000, doesn’t mean you should load it to the max if you only have $1000 in your bank account. I recognize that people sometimes need to do something like this to pay bills, but as a general rule you should do everything in your power to just treat it like a debit card and you won’t be in debt.
Also, I know you didn’t ask this… But I also tend to use my credit card instead of my debit card because I get cash back rewards points for using it (unlike with a debit card). And I’m the US (not sure about other countries), it tends to be much easier to dispute a fraudulent charge to your credit card than your debit card. Because when something is debited from your bank account, it’s almost immediately gone. But when you get a charge to your credit card, it’s kind of like a mini loan, so money is not immediately deducted from your bank account.
Here in Germany you can get back money that somebody took via direct debit, but not if you transfer it yourself. And many supermarkets use direct debit at their own risk after some automated risk analysis, because it has lower fees than girocard/maestro/vpay. (They extract the bank code from the card and print a form for direct debit authorization with the receipt printer)