Freelancer Writers and Credit Cards
June 5, 2008 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
Over at Contract Worker, Rico asks if freelancers should use credit cards. He tells a story on himself about how easy it is to spend more than planned with a credit card.
My hunch is no one should use credit cards unless they are independently wealthy, and even then, only if they pay them off each and every month. The fees and interest are outrageous. Whatever happened to usury laws? Thirty percent? With penalties if I’m late? That’s 30 cents on every dollar… no way, not for me.
It always seems worthwhile to actually look at how long it will take you to pay off a credit card debt. Lots of sites provide calculators. One of my favorites is at BankRate.com
Go ahead, check out your balance there and see how long it will take you making the payments your making now.
I’ve learned to save for what I want… an old fashioned concept, but it’s was so cool to know, when they delivered my new couch, it was paid for!
What do you think? Do you use credit cards? Are they working for you?
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It’s Rico, and thanks for the link! :)
blush, of course it is… not sure where I keep getting all those extra cs but it’s fixed… and you’re welcome.
We use the Amazon Visa card and CostCo American Express cards. We pay them off every month. We’re late maybe once a year. But we get enough free books from Amazon, and enough cash back from Costco, that it ends up that we save money.
We used to have the United Miles plus card. But we stopped flying with United.
Having a credit card makes things much easier; I don’t have to carry cash around or mess with checks. It’s also much, much easier to keep track of what we’re spending money on, because it’s all right there on the CC statement.
It only works because we don’t use the CC for anything we can’t pay off. If we want to buy something big, we get a special account with a low rate (Sears has 0% for a year deals, for example). Or we pull from our savings.
Tammy – yes, your statement “It only works because we don’t use the CC for anything we can’t pay off. If we want to buy something big, we get a special account with a low rate (Sears has 0% for a year deals, for example). Or we pull from our savings.” is the key.
Congratulations.