I might be able to claim the title of CC king here, again. Two years ago I had 45 credit cards from different banks. I used them as a means to finance my business as my lines of credit and credit scores afforded me interest rates at 2% or less, many at 0 %. My business required I stake production costs for up to 60 days and I used CC to fund that. Plus I used CC to purchase equipment that generated income direct. In the process, I was able to finance my business for over 10 years this way at under 2% interest, normally carrying about 60-80 thousand in debt. For personal use I carried a couple of cards, AMEX for travel expenses, a cash back card for household expenses, and a third card for car expenses that gets discounts in cash ( Hess gas card) I also have a card I use for just online purchases. All these I pay off every month and they do carry obscene interest rates if I don't. Most cash back cards do.
The secret of using lots of credit cards is never be maxed out and only charge what you can pay back. and never ever be late. I would actually calculate my amortization on my running balances to amortize in 18 months on equipment purchases and 2 months on production costs. That formula worked well for me over the years.
I never carried a CC balance for personal expenses.
Now, about those Visa Check cards and debit cards. I will never ever carry one of those except in this specific safe situation- Open up a checking account with a completely different bank than I do all other banking. Then only deposit enough cash in that account to cover the planned expense on the debit card. After what happened to my neighbor a few years ago, where they cleaned him out of all his money, savings, CD's and even his IRA ( which I thought was illegal) to cover some lost check card that was used to run up thousands he had to cover until they fixed everything, that was 4 months.
I have an ATM card and while the banks don't like to admit they have them they still have to issue you one if you request it in this state.
Today- I am winding down my business and paid off all debt, including home mortgage and cars, not to mention CC debt in the business and am in the process of canceling all those cards. Times are a changing and what I once did, they are no longer doing easily plus they are starting to charge annual fees and other nonsense charges so having that many cards is getting expensive. 0% interest for 12 months is still available if you have high enough credit score but the balance transfer fees have also gone up. It would be much harder to do what I once did today.
I still carry some cash as you never know, in an emergency, if you need cash. I carry what I can afford to lose.
I give credit when it's due... Just a week ago I got a call from one of my Master card accounts to advise me that I had some very strange charges on my card. Seems I began charging utility bills in Germany. ha ha. The CC company detected this and called me before ever listing that charge on my account. After denying that charge, we cancelled the card. Don't need it anymore. They weren't disappointed because I hadn't used that card for over 2 years. Still, nice of them to call me.
