It's possible, just tricky sometimes. You can have credit without a credit card, you can rent a home or a car without a credit score, and you can even buy a house without a "good" credit rating, you just need real landlords or real mortgage underwriting that looks at your financial situation as a whole.

It's really silly. You could have a million bucks sitting in an account somewhere and your credit report wouldn't say anything about that, but one look at your bank statements would be enough to tell a landlord or a mortgager you're good to go.

I was fortunate enough to be able to sign up for a house payment (in this market! During the zombie apocalypse?!). When the time came for underwriting, they looked at 4 months worth of bank statements since my credit report just had my student loans and a car payment I got rid of in 2017 (in other words, not a "good enough" credit score). It was quite the eye opener of a process, having to explain every deposit to convince them I wasn't laundering money.

Once that house is paid off, that's the last time I'm going to have a credit score. I can get everything else without debt, I just didn't have a cool $155k to drop on the house at the time. Hotels, car rentals, phone bills, electric bills, everything I've tried works fine without a credit check just using EFT or debit cards. Sometimes they charge a deposit, and that's fine. I budget to account for that.

If you have enough savings, sometimes they don't even look at your credit score and history.

Do you have an example of a card who's interest is applied before month end? That sounds shitty as hell

I've never seen bank fees for using a credit card in the USA.

Closest I've seen is certain methods of payment prefer a check since there's no Stripe X% processing fee.

I'd be very surprised if you were actually costing them any money. The value of your points is almost certainly less than the merchant fees they're collecting from your payees.

Those points are all paid for by the fees they charge the people you pay. You aren’t costing them money, you’re just not making them as much as people who can’t/don’t pay off their credit cards.

Failure to adjust your spending after financial hardship would be incompetence or irresponsibility.

I mean if you're living paycheck to paycheck it doesn't matter if you're driving rewards or not when a hardship hits.

It could be argued the person churning credit cards would have the credit rating necessary to get a loan/advance during such a good of need. Whereas someone paying cash all their life would be SOL.

Yes. I fly 6 or 7 times a year though so with the $300 voucher it's easy for me to make that $400 back.

Only if you will use the travel vouchers religiously without forcing it, and really want free drinks and sandwiches during waits at airports. If you will use those things, and it's not a forced thing, 100%, you'll save money vs paying for food/drinks at retail prices.

Maybe Venture X? I have CSR and don’t think I get Hulu with it. I didn’t think Venture X had it either but I can’t think of other cards with 400 annual fee.

Probably not worth, it has a lot of overlap with other cards. The Ritz card provides better lounge access and the CSP has a 10% point bonus per year I think. I keep it because at an effective $250 annual fee (550 - 300 travel credit) I make more than the CSP from travel spend, where it has a 3x multiplier instead of 2x.

Flights go on Amex Plat, Marriott hotels on Ritz, other travel expenses (namely other hotels) on CSR. If you’re not spending enough on one of those categories the value of that respective card drops, save for the Ritz which is just worth it in every scenario.

As a business owner, there is also a monthly generic processing fee. Oftentimes there's a software licensing fee. There's also a compliance fee (sometimes). There are also periodic shore-up fees of the over/under was off during the month. Sometimes there are equipment rental fees or service fees, or you can buy it outright but there's typically still a monthly fee to use it.

Also AmEx is the worst offender depending on your processor, they can charge upwards of 6% to process. Discover is around 3%. Visa & MC are ~1-2%. That's why blended processors tend to be around 2-3%, but it also depends on volume.

Honestly, looking back at a former small business I had, I think it would have been better to be cash only and have an ATM. I know it'd annoy some customers, but our fees/costs just to accept cards was probably 5-10% of gross revenues each month. Then you take out labor, utilities, rent, raw cogs, etc. and your net margin gets real small, real fast.

They have to pay annual fees as well. That's several thousands right there.