Recently, I came across this YouTube video about this real estate investor from U.S.emphasing about the need of having at least one credit card as early as you can afford to. He starts the video by talking about his family situation since young where his family was very opposed to having debts in cluding credit cards. So his family did not have a good impression of credit cards and everything should be paid in cash. Credit cards also made his parents became bankrupt and so he was really into cash.
As a real estate investor he wanted to purchase a few good properties and needed money to invest in. So he used $200 000 which he had as savings in cash. He then went to a few banks and wanted to use 25% of the $200 000 as down payment. The rest would be a loan from the bank so that he could purchase a few properties. He was rejected by all the banks that he went to. He was very confused as he had ZERO debt and had a huge sum of money in his savings account.
He asked himself, "WHY?" and he later found out it was because the banks had no record of him being able to pay back his bills on time and he had no credibility. Hence he had to build it up by having a credit card set up and showed that he was capable of paying back.
I find it really interesting for me as I too at first felt that being debt-free is a sign of being able to manage your finances well and that credit cards are actually redundant. But records matter for banks especially if you were to take a loan from them. So credit cards to the bank serve as a form of your capability to pay your bills and manage your finances well.
Hi, I had the same feelings too. I also thought that card-less is the way to go, because CASH is KING! But upon knowing about this thing called credit score, I see the importance of having a credit card. But the key is to be able to monitor and control your spending just like how you would do for cash.
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