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Friday, January 18, 2008

Using Credit Cards To Your Advantage

There are a lot people who shun credit card use out there - and with good reason. Credit Card companies, as with most companies, are simply out to make money. And they make it by taking it from you. Having said that - I STILL think its ok to have one or two cards that are paid off monthly - IF you're making money on the deal.

We have a Southwest Airlines Credit Card. We've earned lots of FREE airfare as rewards for using the card. Do we charge a lot on the cards or spend outrageously? NOPE. We simply use our card for everything we do. We us it to buy a drink at the mall or a candy bar at the store. We use it to buy our weekly groceries and our gas. Even some of our utilities are set up to run through our Southwest card.

It all adds up, and we have free airfare to show for it. The Southwest card is the only card I recommend if you are interested in free airfare. Most other airline cards use a miles based system that takes a Loooooonnng Tiiimme to build up a reward. Usually you need 25,000 miles to get a ticket. Not so with Southwest. You need 16 points. That's it.

Some people don't like using credit because they feel they overspend and charge up a balance they can't pay back. But if you use your credit responsibly, you CAN make it work for you. In our case, it actually saves us money to use our credit card because we travel to visit family and friends so often. (In fact I haven't paid for hotel rooms OR plane tickets in about 4 years, but thats another post!)

5 comments:

Debbie J said...

You and hubby can always use airline tickets so you are really smart to know how to handle your card that way!

E.C. said...

That sounds very handy. If it were possible to fly from my area on Southwest Airlines (sigh), I'd certainly consider doing what you are.

Little Penpen said...

My brother does this! He is very talented in making money off credit cards.

Mary@notbefore7 said...

So with you on that one! We use a credit card for the cash back and love it!

Unknown said...

Hey I am a certified credit counsellor and I still have one credit card for this purpose. It just takes willpower to ensure you pay it off every month and keep track of everything. We use ours for grocery gift certificates.