Well firstly you need to understand exactly how much you are going to be able to spend on your card each month, before you spend anything.  This figure must be dependent on what money you have coming in each month from your job etc.  The only way you will make the most of your credit card is to pay it off every month, the entire balance.  If that doesn’t sound like you can do it then you are wasting your time.

The idea is to get a great credit rating and to get as many rewards as possible without paying a penny of interest.  You can only do this if you pay off your balance in full at the end of every month.  There is no other way to succeed with credit cards.  If you only pay the minimum amount from your balance one month, you can bet by the following month you will end up having to pay some interest on your balance.  Don’t give your credit card company a chance to charge you money, make sure you pay off your balance in full, every month!

The patience is of course to wait for the payments that will never arrive.  Call me cinical, but i know students and i know how unlikely it is to get them to pay their bills (it’s about as unlikely as it is to get them to tidy up after themselves sometimes.)  So the type of college credt card you want is one that is prepared to offer you a low(ish) interest rate and allow you to make the minimum payments without hassling you until such time as you graduate and are able to pay off more and more.  The credit card company of course will charge an extorionate amount of interest on the money in an attempt to try to prevent it every being paid off; they want a constant meal ticket you see and you’ll never be able to pay them off unless you make significant and regular offers.

There is no shame in collecting points for things, don’t get me wrong, but i am one of those credit card users who prefers to feel like an adult and not someone playing a gameshow.  I would like my rewards where i can see them and i would like them instantly if there are any at all.  This is why i go for cashback credit cards.  After all, can you think of anything that your current rewards credit card can offer you that money can’t actually buy?  No i didn’t think so.

So wouldn’t you much rather have the money and then you decide on what you want to spend it on rather than from a list of gifts or selected stores?  I know i would.  I collect cashback and i spend it on what the hell i want; what i really want.

The fee could end up taking a huge chunk out of the money you would have usually hanve saved by going with another company who doesn’t charge you for the privilege.  After all the idea of transfering your balance is to save money isn’t it, and buy a little time to pay it all off eventually?  If your balance is very high then paying a fee for the transfer simply isn’t worth it, and this is where those sneaky credit card companies get you, you see.  They can’t wait for you to transfer your money, and then they don’t care if you transfer it again to someone else, simply because they have made their money from your transfer fee!

You simply have to analyse your income and expenditure closely before you even bother to apply.  I don’t mean look at it the way a credit card company does, which is basically to see if you are earning enough per year to match their records.  You may very well be earning enough money and your credit score could be fabulous, but you never know what might happen and it’s best to control yourself.

You need to take into account what you’re paying out of your income, and seriously ask yourself why you want or need a credit card.  If it’s for the rewards or cashback and you intend to pay it off every month then this is a great idea – IF you stick to it that is!

The amount of people who get themselves a good credit card and ruin it because they don’t keep up what they said they were going to do is astronomical!  You simply have to pay it off in order to get all the benefits from its use.  Remember that the credit card company doesn’t actually want you to pay it off in full every month, and when you start doing this they’ll increase your limit if you’re not careful, and this is where you could fail.

Why they wouldn’t apply for one because of this i don’ t know, perhaps it’s because they can’t handle rejection?  Or perhaps it’s because when you get refused by a credit company the details of your credit scoring are recorded for future use by other credit card companies.  This is more than likely it isn’t it?  But it’s not all doom and gloom and you needn’t let this put you off.

Just because your details have been recorded, including your refusal, it doesn’t mean that a bank or credit card company won’t ever touch you again and they will certainly re test your credit score when you apply to them.  All it tells them is that you’ve attempted to obtain credit and been unsuccessful.  It doesn’t tell them to leave you alone or that you are a risk, and believe me these credit card companies want your business.  If you had been turned down twenty time and then applied to yet another company they would still carry out the credit score simply because they want you to pass it!  So don’t be afraid of your credit score so much, it’s not all bad; unless of course you have defaulted on payments recently.

Credit cards can help pay for all the things the kids want to do in the holidays, and not only that, they can also end up paying for the family holiuday abroad.  But you have to be careful here, because that holiday of a lifetime could actually end up taking you a lifetime to pay off!  It’s not worth it at all.

As a nation we have grown impatient, and we always want what we want immediately.  This is where the credit card will trip us up, and in the summer it gets worse.  It’s not only the big things that you need to watch out for like holidays, it’s also all the little extras that you get in because you’re perhaps organising a BBQ and you need some more beers, or food for the grill.  You might invest in some patio furniture or maybe some activities for the garden so the kids can enjoy their time outside a little more.

Either way the summer will cost you a fortune if you don’t slow it down.  You don’t need to have everything and you should teach your children to wait for things.  Don’t let your credit card rule  your life!

But what you could do for them is get a prepaid credit card.  Prepaid credit cards are the best thing to teach your children about credit cards and the financial world in general.  If they have pocket money it’s a good idea to put it on their prepaid credit card and let them learn how to spend money on it like adults do.  The only difference is that they won’t be able to spend more than what’s on the card.

This can progress with your teenager when you think about it.  When they get their first job they may even continue to use the same format for their wages.  It’s much safer to carry a card on your person than to risk carrying around a load of cash, and with a credit card you can pay for goods and services without having to go to a machine to get out cash.

If your teenager learns to use a credit card from an early age (perhaps 13 is a good age) then they are much more likley to be responsible with a credit card when they become an adult; and let’s face it, many people could do with being a bit more responsible with credit couldn’t they?

Most of the credit cards that offer 0% interest on balance transfers for 13-15 months or more have a fee attached to them of about 2-3%.  This really isn’t worth the fee when you consider that you’re only get a maximum of 3 extra months interest free.  This is because you can nearly always get 12 months at 0% interest on your balance transfers from other credit cards, without a fee.

It’s best to go with a 12 month credit card and then if your credit rating is secure enough, you can tart your balance over to yet another 12 months interest free credit card.  This way you can settle your balance without paying any interest (and more importantly no fee) for two years.  Now that has to sound tempting for some people.  How much could you get off your credit card balance in two years if you were not paying any interest at all?  A good lot i’ll bet!

It’s so much easier to have all your facts and figures on your computer already, because you can bet that the application is going to want to see facts and figures about your most intimate secrets before allowing you to hold their fabled credit card.  Although i am being a little ironic here i would like to point out that banks and credit card companies do have to be a lot more careful about who they lend money to these days.  There was a time that virtually anyone could have got hold of a credit card and as long as they made a few payments here and there they soon had an available credit limit into the thousands!

This is the only drawback with online credit card applications; they might possibly be a little too easy.  If you can sit at home in the comfort of your office chair and just apply for £1000 in credit then some might say this is a little too easy.  There was a time when you had to put on a suit and go to the bank to see the manager about getting anything.  What has the world come to?