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I'm 46. I've never had a credit card. I have a bank account and a debit card. If I can't afford something, I don't buy it. You can just opt out of using credit

I'm 46. I've never had a credit card. I have a bank account and a debit card. If I can't afford something, I don't buy it. You can just opt out of using credit cards.

tomaskafka 22d ago
Whole Europe does this. I never understood why whole nation wants to live in debt just to have one extra month of cash flow (which they’ll probably squander soon).
- nemomarx 22d ago
  Pay your credit card balance off every week, and it's an overly complicated debit card but you technically build up a score for future loans. Also maybe you get cash back on that? Rational if you want a mortgage in the US at least.
  - ramijames 22d ago
    I'm in Boston. I'll never earn enough to buy property here. I'll never have a mortgage.
    - frantathefranta 22d ago
      I'm in <other US city>. It's possible to earn enough to buy property here. I already have a mortgage (as an immigrant, building a credit score from credit cards which in turn qualifies you easily for a mortgage is pretty nice).
- croon 22d ago
  While I hate that it's like this, you're leaving money on the table. Currently you're keeping money in the bank accruing the bank interest to occasionally pay for stuff. With a credit card you would get various bonuses/cashback/gameified returns by owing them money, and it costs you nothing as long as you pay them back once a month interest free. If you however slip up/miss a payment it will cost you a lot. Both cases suck, but the latter saves you money if you play that game. That's from a EU perspective. From a US perspective you also require it from a credit score perspective, which EU thankfully hasn't adopted... yet.
  - Aefiam 22d ago
    as far as I understand it, the creditcard rewards are from the creditcard fee, which is capped in the eu, so you are not missing out much.
    - croon 22d ago
      Cashback is definitely capped, I'm less sure on other forms of rewards, but by my napkin comparisons, I do get out more "value" from my credit cards than the fees and cashback caps. YMMV of course.
- rdschouw 22d ago
  Ex-European here. It is very common to overdraft your bank account in Europe. The overdraft interest fees are very similar to the credit cards here in the US. It is basically the same service but with a different execution.
- ricardobayes 22d ago
  Yet many European countries have high household debt. Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, some of the highest in the world. I guess it has to be mortgages, since it's true they are not that "big" on credit cards. Although Klarna is a Swedish company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
  - hvb2 22d ago
    Speaking for NL, yes it's mortgages. And those come with monthly payments towards the principal in pretty much all cases. Also, those being mortgages the rates are like 5% or so, not over 20%. Soll After 30 years, people generally speaking own their home and that's their biggest chunk of wealth. So basically, yes a high debt to income ratio, but it's building towards wealth and its not high interest debt either.
- rsynnott 22d ago
  This is arguably partly because the EU caps card interchange (at 0.3%, generally). So these reward schemes don’t exist, because there’s no money for them, so why would anyone use a credit card over a debit card or bank transfer unless they need the credit? Most people in the US presumably don’t start using credit cards thinking “I’ll get in debt, that’ll be great”; it’s the reward schemes.
- freeone3000 22d ago
  Because it gives me 2.5% cash back, which is basically free money.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 22d ago
    That comes out of the merchant's pocket, who has priced it into the sale price you are paying. It is not, thus, free money, at all.
    - recursivecaveat 22d ago
      On a macro level, that's true. On an individual level, your avacados cost 3% more whether you use credit or debit, it's just your choice to recover 2.5% from that back in rewards or not.
      - ThePowerOfFuet 9d ago
        >On an individual level, your avacados cost 3% more whether you use credit or debit, it's just your choice to recover 2.5% from that back in rewards or not. I instead chose to live somewhere it's capped at 0.3% and then I don't have to fuck around to get my money back after the fact. As an added bonus, I don't even know what a medical bill looks like.
      - amiga386 22d ago
        It can also be your choice to lobby your government to shut down the rent-seeking behaviour of Visa and MasterCard. It can be done. The UK and the EU capped fees at 0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards
  - wookmaster 22d ago
    How do you think they got that 2.5% to "give back"?
- AnnikaL 22d ago
  I'm American, and I don't use the extra cash flow (in fact, I make sure to keep more money in my checking account than I spend on the credit card, so I can always auto-pay my bill and therefore never pay any interest). If I could get a debit card that gave me 2% cash back on all transactions, I'd use that instead!
- gblargg 21d ago
  Using a credit card isn't only about living on debt. Some people pay them off every month, and use them for the fraud protection and rewards.
Lucasoato 22d ago
I’ll never understand this credit card debt thing... and why should businesses eat the credit card commission cost? Is it 5%? You pay for it, why should I?
- tialaramex 22d ago
  The reason for a business to want to accept cards is that some fraction of your customers would choose not to buy whatever it is you sell if not for the convenience. Whether that's a guy who decides not to buy donuts because then he won't have even to buy more scratch-offs or the woman who doesn't get those bald tires replaced because if she did the family will be leaving on cheese sandwiches until payday. For the consumer the reason is that this is revolving credit. If you pay next month you can have stuff today. That's a small relief, unless it turns into a carried balance and then it's an ongoing burden, but you don't think about that burden at first because you're naturally optimistic.
  - nickjj 22d ago
    > If you pay next month you can have stuff today. There is value in this even if you always pay your full statement balance every month. If you have a stable source of income knowing your credit card payment is due on the 7th of every month means you don't have to monitor your checking account's balance for every purchase. You only have to think "make sure you can cover $X by the 7th".
- dboreham 22d ago
  Vampire Squid. But this is only in one country. Go other places (e.g. New Zealand) and reality is different. There every single transaction has the credit card fee added explicitly.
- sokoloff 22d ago
  I’ve literally never bought anything with a debit card. I’ve definitely spent over a million dollars on credit cards in the last 3 decades and maybe over 2 million if you include personal and business card transactions. That’s why businesses eat the credit card fees.
amazingamazing 22d ago
Honorable but foolish. You could effectively get a discount and still use it the same way as your debit card.
- ramijames 22d ago
  Sorry, but I don't care what other people think. It's my money and I'm careful with it. The entire credit card industry is set up to squeeze out as much profit from people as possible. They offer discounts as an incentive, but it is a huge trap that many, many people fall into. I'm not interested in risk. I'm interested in simplicity. It's participating in the credit card industry that is foolish.
  - wildrhythms 22d ago
    For people who only spend what they have, what is the risk? I don't accrue credit card debt, never have, so I've enjoyed a 2-3% discount on my entire spending history. Over lifetime that will probably amount to a couple of vacations.
    - john_strinlai 22d ago
      >For people who only spend what they have, what is the risk? there is none. some people are just ideologically opposed to credit cards, like the parent appears to be. their loss, really. they end up paying a portion of the cost but reap none of the benefits (rewards, additional legal protections)
  - Loggias 22d ago
    [dead]
  - rpdillon 22d ago
    I completely get where you're coming from, but credit cards are a tool, and you can came out way ahead using them properly. For starters, they are key to having a good credit rating, which opens a lot of doors - maintain 3 open cards, pay off the full balance every month, and keep those accounts open for 10+ years. Big lift. Second, never use a card with an annual fee. Third, which I already said, but bears repeating: pay off the full balance every month. Fourth, look out for one good rewards card and funnel expenses through it, so you can get the rewards. My parents taught me all of this 40 years ago, and it was exceptional advice, and has served me (and my family) very well. Credit cards are not about carrying debt. They are the worst tool for that.
stetrain 22d ago
If you shop at places where many customers user credit cards, and those places don't change an extra credit card processing fee to customers, then you are effectively paying for those credit card fees whether or not you use one. Opting out doesn't save you from those costs.
kotaKat 22d ago
I assume you've somehow gotten access to stable housing though via that bank account (possibly a home loan, or something else), or accessed a large line of credit before 'modern' credit scoring came into play (FICO scores and the Big Three). I see many commercials for local banking up here that pulls out 30-40+ year members of the banks boasting about the prosperity the bank provided them, but at the same time, when they'd walked into the bank back in the day A Guy just said "yeah he's good for it" and wrote out the loans they needed. You can't opt out of the modern credit scoring system and if you fuck it up even once with a bad line item you're out of the running for quite a few things and become virtually poor.
oefrha 22d ago
Try to pay for SaaS online. Tons of them accept nothing but credit cards; and then some of them accept direct withdrawals from bank account but it takes days to verify. Services using Stripe seems to be the worst at this. (I’ve never carried a credit card balance my whole life.)
- timcobb 22d ago
  Debit cards charge as credit cards no problem. That said not having a credit card is tough on your credit history. You could just have one and pay the balance but then they still have all your data, it sucks
  - oefrha 22d ago
    I’ve specifically had debit card with Visa mark declined online where credit card was expected. Don’t know how common that is because one stops doing that once it happens a couple times.
    - deleted 22d ago
      [deleted]
gumby 22d ago
In the US you have several legal safeguards that are not provided by debit cards. Fraud liability limitations, chargebacks, and so on. You can still implement “if I can’t afford something, I don’t buy it” with a cc. I pay mine off every month so it’s financially the same s a debit card but use a premium card for its purchase benefits.
- elmer2 22d ago
  I used to have this same mentality (no credit cards) when I was younger, until my debit card was stolen and someone took $1000. The bank basically shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do. I always get my money back when this happens with a credit card purchase. I've also had to dispute things occasionally, and I almost always get refunded.
  - amiga386 22d ago
    In an alternative universe, the government could require banks to refund victims of theft and fraud. It's entirely possible for banks to do this without requiring you use a credit card, they just don't want to. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8545/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... > Industry body, UK Finance, estimates that criminals successfully stole £1.28 billion through banking fraud and scams in 2025. Of this, £703 million was unauthorised and £576 million was authorised. > Unauthorised fraud is where the fraudulent transaction is carried out by a third party, not the victim. Authorised fraud involves the victim being tricked into paying money into another account that is controlled by a criminal. This is also known as Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud. https://www.psr.org.uk/news-and-updates/latest-news/news/payment-fraud-falls-by-73m-following-psr-reimbursement-scheme/ https://www.psr.org.uk/news-and-updates/latest-news/news/pay... > Frontier found that APP fraud losses have fallen by an estimated £73 million per year and the number of APP scams have fallen by nearly 35,000 due to the policy. Reimbursement rates for all claims have risen from 54% to 65%, and for claims in-scope of the policy, firms are now reimbursing 97%.
    - gumby 22d ago
ponector 22d ago
If you are traveling and need to rent a car in the airport - sometimes it is not possible to do without credit card. Otherwise you don't need a credit card.
- ButlerianJihad 22d ago
  Using a credit card makes it way, way easier to rent a car or book a hotel room, or do other transactions that require a significant preauth. If you present a debit card to one of those desks, they may encourage you to swap for a credit card. Because a debit preauth ties up actual funds in your account. A credit preauth costs nothing but part of your credit limit. It really is a difference if you expect to spend money on vacation.

I'm 46. I've never had a credit card. I have a bank account and a debit card. If I can't afford something, I don't buy it. You can just opt out of using credit cards.

tomaskafka 22d ago

Whole Europe does this. I never understood why whole nation wants to live in debt just to have one extra month of cash flow (which they’ll probably squander soon).

nemomarx 22d ago
Pay your credit card balance off every week, and it's an overly complicated debit card but you technically build up a score for future loans. Also maybe you get cash back on that? Rational if you want a mortgage in the US at least.
- ramijames 22d ago
  I'm in Boston. I'll never earn enough to buy property here. I'll never have a mortgage.
  - frantathefranta 22d ago
    I'm in <other US city>. It's possible to earn enough to buy property here. I already have a mortgage (as an immigrant, building a credit score from credit cards which in turn qualifies you easily for a mortgage is pretty nice).
croon 22d ago
While I hate that it's like this, you're leaving money on the table. Currently you're keeping money in the bank accruing the bank interest to occasionally pay for stuff. With a credit card you would get various bonuses/cashback/gameified returns by owing them money, and it costs you nothing as long as you pay them back once a month interest free. If you however slip up/miss a payment it will cost you a lot. Both cases suck, but the latter saves you money if you play that game. That's from a EU perspective. From a US perspective you also require it from a credit score perspective, which EU thankfully hasn't adopted... yet.
- Aefiam 22d ago
  as far as I understand it, the creditcard rewards are from the creditcard fee, which is capped in the eu, so you are not missing out much.
  - croon 22d ago
    Cashback is definitely capped, I'm less sure on other forms of rewards, but by my napkin comparisons, I do get out more "value" from my credit cards than the fees and cashback caps. YMMV of course.
rdschouw 22d ago
Ex-European here. It is very common to overdraft your bank account in Europe. The overdraft interest fees are very similar to the credit cards here in the US. It is basically the same service but with a different execution.
ricardobayes 22d ago
Yet many European countries have high household debt. Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, some of the highest in the world. I guess it has to be mortgages, since it's true they are not that "big" on credit cards. Although Klarna is a Swedish company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
- hvb2 22d ago
  Speaking for NL, yes it's mortgages. And those come with monthly payments towards the principal in pretty much all cases. Also, those being mortgages the rates are like 5% or so, not over 20%. Soll After 30 years, people generally speaking own their home and that's their biggest chunk of wealth. So basically, yes a high debt to income ratio, but it's building towards wealth and its not high interest debt either.
rsynnott 22d ago
This is arguably partly because the EU caps card interchange (at 0.3%, generally). So these reward schemes don’t exist, because there’s no money for them, so why would anyone use a credit card over a debit card or bank transfer unless they need the credit? Most people in the US presumably don’t start using credit cards thinking “I’ll get in debt, that’ll be great”; it’s the reward schemes.
freeone3000 22d ago
Because it gives me 2.5% cash back, which is basically free money.
- ThePowerOfFuet 22d ago
  That comes out of the merchant's pocket, who has priced it into the sale price you are paying. It is not, thus, free money, at all.
  - recursivecaveat 22d ago
    On a macro level, that's true. On an individual level, your avacados cost 3% more whether you use credit or debit, it's just your choice to recover 2.5% from that back in rewards or not.
    - ThePowerOfFuet 9d ago
      >On an individual level, your avacados cost 3% more whether you use credit or debit, it's just your choice to recover 2.5% from that back in rewards or not. I instead chose to live somewhere it's capped at 0.3% and then I don't have to fuck around to get my money back after the fact. As an added bonus, I don't even know what a medical bill looks like.
    - amiga386 22d ago
      It can also be your choice to lobby your government to shut down the rent-seeking behaviour of Visa and MasterCard. It can be done. The UK and the EU capped fees at 0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards
- wookmaster 22d ago
  How do you think they got that 2.5% to "give back"?
AnnikaL 22d ago
I'm American, and I don't use the extra cash flow (in fact, I make sure to keep more money in my checking account than I spend on the credit card, so I can always auto-pay my bill and therefore never pay any interest). If I could get a debit card that gave me 2% cash back on all transactions, I'd use that instead!
gblargg 21d ago
Using a credit card isn't only about living on debt. Some people pay them off every month, and use them for the fraud protection and rewards.

Lucasoato 22d ago

I’ll never understand this credit card debt thing... and why should businesses eat the credit card commission cost? Is it 5%? You pay for it, why should I?

tialaramex 22d ago
The reason for a business to want to accept cards is that some fraction of your customers would choose not to buy whatever it is you sell if not for the convenience. Whether that's a guy who decides not to buy donuts because then he won't have even to buy more scratch-offs or the woman who doesn't get those bald tires replaced because if she did the family will be leaving on cheese sandwiches until payday. For the consumer the reason is that this is revolving credit. If you pay next month you can have stuff today. That's a small relief, unless it turns into a carried balance and then it's an ongoing burden, but you don't think about that burden at first because you're naturally optimistic.
- nickjj 22d ago
  > If you pay next month you can have stuff today. There is value in this even if you always pay your full statement balance every month. If you have a stable source of income knowing your credit card payment is due on the 7th of every month means you don't have to monitor your checking account's balance for every purchase. You only have to think "make sure you can cover $X by the 7th".
dboreham 22d ago
Vampire Squid. But this is only in one country. Go other places (e.g. New Zealand) and reality is different. There every single transaction has the credit card fee added explicitly.
sokoloff 22d ago
I’ve literally never bought anything with a debit card. I’ve definitely spent over a million dollars on credit cards in the last 3 decades and maybe over 2 million if you include personal and business card transactions. That’s why businesses eat the credit card fees.

amazingamazing 22d ago

Honorable but foolish. You could effectively get a discount and still use it the same way as your debit card.

ramijames 22d ago
Sorry, but I don't care what other people think. It's my money and I'm careful with it. The entire credit card industry is set up to squeeze out as much profit from people as possible. They offer discounts as an incentive, but it is a huge trap that many, many people fall into. I'm not interested in risk. I'm interested in simplicity. It's participating in the credit card industry that is foolish.
- wildrhythms 22d ago
  For people who only spend what they have, what is the risk? I don't accrue credit card debt, never have, so I've enjoyed a 2-3% discount on my entire spending history. Over lifetime that will probably amount to a couple of vacations.
  - john_strinlai 22d ago
    >For people who only spend what they have, what is the risk? there is none. some people are just ideologically opposed to credit cards, like the parent appears to be. their loss, really. they end up paying a portion of the cost but reap none of the benefits (rewards, additional legal protections)
- Loggias 22d ago
  [dead]
- rpdillon 22d ago
  I completely get where you're coming from, but credit cards are a tool, and you can came out way ahead using them properly. For starters, they are key to having a good credit rating, which opens a lot of doors - maintain 3 open cards, pay off the full balance every month, and keep those accounts open for 10+ years. Big lift. Second, never use a card with an annual fee. Third, which I already said, but bears repeating: pay off the full balance every month. Fourth, look out for one good rewards card and funnel expenses through it, so you can get the rewards. My parents taught me all of this 40 years ago, and it was exceptional advice, and has served me (and my family) very well. Credit cards are not about carrying debt. They are the worst tool for that.

stetrain 22d ago

If you shop at places where many customers user credit cards, and those places don't change an extra credit card processing fee to customers, then you are effectively paying for those credit card fees whether or not you use one. Opting out doesn't save you from those costs.

kotaKat 22d ago

I assume you've somehow gotten access to stable housing though via that bank account (possibly a home loan, or something else), or accessed a large line of credit before 'modern' credit scoring came into play (FICO scores and the Big Three). I see many commercials for local banking up here that pulls out 30-40+ year members of the banks boasting about the prosperity the bank provided them, but at the same time, when they'd walked into the bank back in the day A Guy just said "yeah he's good for it" and wrote out the loans they needed. You can't opt out of the modern credit scoring system and if you fuck it up even once with a bad line item you're out of the running for quite a few things and become virtually poor.

oefrha 22d ago

Try to pay for SaaS online. Tons of them accept nothing but credit cards; and then some of them accept direct withdrawals from bank account but it takes days to verify. Services using Stripe seems to be the worst at this. (I’ve never carried a credit card balance my whole life.)

timcobb 22d ago
Debit cards charge as credit cards no problem. That said not having a credit card is tough on your credit history. You could just have one and pay the balance but then they still have all your data, it sucks
- oefrha 22d ago
  I’ve specifically had debit card with Visa mark declined online where credit card was expected. Don’t know how common that is because one stops doing that once it happens a couple times.
  - deleted 22d ago
    [deleted]

gumby 22d ago

In the US you have several legal safeguards that are not provided by debit cards. Fraud liability limitations, chargebacks, and so on. You can still implement “if I can’t afford something, I don’t buy it” with a cc. I pay mine off every month so it’s financially the same s a debit card but use a premium card for its purchase benefits.

elmer2 22d ago
I used to have this same mentality (no credit cards) when I was younger, until my debit card was stolen and someone took $1000. The bank basically shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do. I always get my money back when this happens with a credit card purchase. I've also had to dispute things occasionally, and I almost always get refunded.
- amiga386 22d ago
  In an alternative universe, the government could require banks to refund victims of theft and fraud. It's entirely possible for banks to do this without requiring you use a credit card, they just don't want to. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8545/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-... > Industry body, UK Finance, estimates that criminals successfully stole £1.28 billion through banking fraud and scams in 2025. Of this, £703 million was unauthorised and £576 million was authorised. > Unauthorised fraud is where the fraudulent transaction is carried out by a third party, not the victim. Authorised fraud involves the victim being tricked into paying money into another account that is controlled by a criminal. This is also known as Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud. https://www.psr.org.uk/news-and-updates/latest-news/news/payment-fraud-falls-by-73m-following-psr-reimbursement-scheme/ https://www.psr.org.uk/news-and-updates/latest-news/news/pay... > Frontier found that APP fraud losses have fallen by an estimated £73 million per year and the number of APP scams have fallen by nearly 35,000 due to the policy. Reimbursement rates for all claims have risen from 54% to 65%, and for claims in-scope of the policy, firms are now reimbursing 97%.
  - gumby 22d ago

ponector 22d ago

If you are traveling and need to rent a car in the airport - sometimes it is not possible to do without credit card. Otherwise you don't need a credit card.

ButlerianJihad 22d ago
Using a credit card makes it way, way easier to rent a car or book a hotel room, or do other transactions that require a significant preauth. If you present a debit card to one of those desks, they may encourage you to swap for a credit card. Because a debit preauth ties up actual funds in your account. A credit preauth costs nothing but part of your credit limit. It really is a difference if you expect to spend money on vacation.