Credit Card. Useful or useless?

thrwbckjay67 is right. For the longest time my wife and i refused to have credit cards, using debit and cash for anything we needed, and saving for anything we couldn't afford. Unfortunately, things like that don't show up on your credit, which left us with basically having no credit, as we were renting at the time, and had already paid off our car. Then we did a credit check and found out..wow. we have no credit!! The easiest thing to do? You don't even have to get a 10,000 limit credit card. Go to your bank, get a secured credit card for 100 bucks, buy a tank of gas on it every month and pay it off at the end of the month. Then you start to build credit, and don't have to worry about over extending yourself and getting caught in the trap. We now have two credit cards, and we're very strict. We don't even take them with us when we go out. Buy a tank of gas, take the card home, put it up until the next month.

I think that since credit is what a lot of bigger purchases are based on, that credit cards are almost necessary. When making purchases like homes or cars, they check your credit score. You have to build credit, which happens with having and using and paying off credit cards. I don't think it's a waste, you just need to be wise with it, the mistake that a lot of people fall into. My wife and I, any purchases we make on the credit cards we have, we pay off in full at the end of the month, just so that we don't owe anything more and we build our credit scores.

Here in the US there are a lot of online stores, memberships, etc., that only take credit/debit cards, and will not accept cash. Also, some places are turning to credit/debit cards instead of cash for safety reasons, such as the Biolife center where I donate plasma.