Managing Your Credit Cards
People are happy when their credit card application is approved. They do not need to carry as much cash with them anymore, and they start to have better self-confidence for being trusted by the bank or credit card issuer to hold a credit card. How to make the credit card ownership work as well as it is supposed to? How can we make credit cards work for us and not the other way around?
Credit card is about prestige; owning one means that one or more financial institutions locally or internationally trust us to borrow money from them to purchase products and services that we need and pay them back later. However, this is not where it stops; credit card has many functions that we can utilize for our better financial management, with many unpleasant consequences waiting to emerge, if lack of care is taken in using it
Nowadays, so many services can be linked to our credit cards; retail purchases (shopping), bill payments (auto debit), travel insurance, product insurance, subscriptions, etc. Most of these services rely on our timely payments to ensure the continuance of their services. Using our credit cards to pay for such services allow us to avoid late payments to these service providers and to better manage our financial responsibilities because we can monitor our monthly expenses and analyze any fluctuations involved in the expenses.
Remember! Always pay attention to the total limits of payments that we can charge to our credit cards. We don’t want over limits as it will attract additional charges!
Another important function that most people are looking for in owning a credit card is to worry less in the times when we or our loved ones to get medical treatments right away. Some hospitals and medical practitioners are subsidized by the government, but there are some cases when we need to pay for some of the medicines or medical services ourselves. In these urgent times, we don’t want to worry about having a low balance in our bank account. Having a credit card would give us the convenience to make payments without actually having any money on us.
Remember! Unlike making a purchase, any cash withdrawal from credit cards would attract interest starting from the time it is withdrawn, not from the due date of the bill statement.
Last but not least, having a credit card is an utmost convenience that works as a double-sided sword; credit cards can help us manage our finance, or make our life miserable. Credit card issuers will keep increasing our credit card purchase and cash withdrawal limits based on our usage of the credit cards. The increased credit card limits show our increasing credibility in the eyes of the credit card issuers, as much as it gives us more flexibility in using the credit cards. Therefore, we need to watch out for ourselves.
Remember! Always control your spending and maintain it not to exceed the proportion of your income intended to be spent on living costs and planned spending. Incurring credit card debts that is higher than what you earn and able to pay for, can drag you into deep credit card problems, even lead to bankruptcy!
So, manage your credit cards so that it works for you and not the other way around!
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