I was watching the TV and saw Fear Factoer giving out $10,000 to $50,000 from Capital One. Thats my interest there folks. Freakin' cake eaters. Bye bye Capital One. Yellow American Express.

They all have promotions like that. You just haven't been exposed to the AmEx ones....yet..

When you make the decision to not pay off your entire balance the interest becomes their money to do with as they please. I too have a capital one card and thought it was dumb, but then i realized i always pay the balance so it isn't my money.

double post.

Yep, same here. Pay the bill when its due, and credit cards are free
Now from the economics major part of me, you actually make money by using credit cards because of inflation between your purchase and the bill.

Capital One saved my butt last week by catching a fraudulent user who was about to rack up mega bills using new expiry dated cards that were in the mail to me.
Only took them two hours to notify me and cancel the card.
The fraudulent user was 3000 mi away. Stole my new replacement cards right out of the mail.
No costs incurred to me at all except the inconvenience of having to use another card temporarily.
Kudos to Capital One. :P

True. But, the MBA side of me tells me that the margin that you're acutally "saving" is only .000001%, tops from month to month!

I agree, though, pay off the statement when the bill arrives. No sense in giving away money to the credit card companies.

ALTHOUGH the statistic is out there that says, a person on average will spend 35% more money using a credit card (because of the availability and convenience) than if they used cash. It psychologically hurts a lot more to be handing out those hard-earned 20, 50, and 100-dollar bills (and thus you are less likely to do it as often), than to simply swipe your plastic and sign your name. 30 days later when you get the higher-than-expected bill, it'* hard to think back and remember where you could've saved...

which is exactly why debit cards are the only plastic I ever use. It'* impossibe to over spend, and if a program such as microsoft money is used (as I have done in the past) to keep track of bills, both paid and upcoming, you're waaaay better off than using credit cards.

It all comes down to discipline. My wife exclusively only use credit cards. We've never paid a penny of finance charges or late fees, and still manage to have a decent savings account. We use the Discover card. And it does "pay to use Discover". Even though we don't pay them anything in finance fees, they still give us back about $350 every year as a "thank you".

Spend your dollars, save your pennies.