POINTS!!!

Credit Cards.  They are EVIL.  Well, they can be.  They were for me in my earlier years.  They can be like 'play money' .. but then...   reality hits with crazy interest rates.  Sometimes, it seems like one can never get ahead of the curve with them.   Some folks such as Dave Ramsey, say NEVER use a credit card....   I get it.. even agree to some extent... but..  I have a different view nowadays

 Many credit cards have some beni's tied to them.   Cash back, airline points, miles, .. .you name it.  They all get sneaky hoping we'll carry a balance and pay interest to them.  Their asses are covered out the gate since they charge retailers a fee for the use.  Problem is, most of us 'need' one.  Ever try to rent a car without one?  A hotel room?  An airline ticket?  Oh.. you use a DEBIT card?  Huh... how'd that work when they locked down a portion of your funds?  How'd that work when some hacker got your number and your funds were tied up?  Cash?  Let me know how that one works as well.   Credit Cards .. they have a time and a place... BUT... YOU MUST PAY THEM OFF and NOT carry a balance!

My world .. and I highly recommend this .. IF .. you PAY THEM OFF monthly.  This is critical.   Okay .. back to my world.

Historically when I auto-pay bills and such, I never tie them to our bank accounts. If you don't know what the monthly charge will be, why do that?  At least that's my thought.  Instead, the vast majority of our utilities, etc .. let us 'charge it'.  So, we have a couple of cards we use exclusively for this.  Then during the month, we log in and pay them off (those are tied to a bank account for payment purposes).    But, I go one step further.  We put EVERYTHING on credit cards; EVERYTHING.   Groceries, fuel, restaurants...if they'll take the card, I charge it.   Now I admit sometimes I get some sticker shock when I login to pay ...  you quickly realize how much one spends on everything.  Those Amazon packages don't pay for themselves!   But.. there is an upside here.....the point of this Blog.

I personally use several cards....  a quick glance at them tells me this ..

American Express ....  412,577 points
Chase- United mileage rewards  ...  594,212
Chase - Marriott BonvoyTM Points ...209,261
Chase - Southwest Airlines ....44,928
SunCountry ..  75,000
Hilton  ...  110,000
CITI ... AmericanAirlines  130,000

Hell, I'm sure I missed one along the way.  Now those that do this, will pick out something I'm doing wrong here.. and .. I agree... so I'm adjusting.  Some of these cards have an annual cost.  So, if one is realllly being smart .. they'll pick one or two ... only.   But, some of these gave me points out the gate for using them.. and .. I just haven't closed them yet. Also, sometimes having them spread out, makes it more difficult to use... for example, I just mentioned FOUR different airlines....   that's a pain in the ass.  I used to do AA exclusively.. but ..   here I am with about 800,000 points/miles spread out.  AA's hub is in Dallas... so, that used to be my focus.  I can tell you that we are moving away from the United Card and going to redirect those charges to the Marriott card; my favorite hotel chain. If I was to use only ONE card...   I wish it could be the AMEX, but it's not accepted everywhere due to their higher fees to retailers. Still, I can used that at 90% of the places I go to.

So, the morale of the story?  Well... for my story .. I put ALL my bills.  All my daily costs.  EVERYTHING possible on a card and use those points for travel (you can also purchase items on Amazon, etc with some of them ... such as AMEX). Except for the annual cost, there is nothing but an upside here....   well... unless one carries a balance... and that .. is what they are hoping we do?

"47 percent of Americans carry a monthly balance on their credit cards. Of them, over 70 percent say that balance is more than $1,000 on average."