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Benefit Of Credit Cards: Credit Card Tricks To Hep You Earn More
If you live in India, you may have seen offers like these. No, not the products. Look at the deals at the bottom, the discounts by the banks. These juicy offers are usually on credit card purchases signalling huge Benefits of Credit Cards. If you have a specific type of credit card, you get a particular type of discount.
Why the banks offer huge discounts and how it benefits them is beyond the scope of today’s topic.
The topic for today’s discussion is how these credit cards allow you to save more money and earn a bit extra.
Consumerism is on the rise. A large number of people are looking for new things to entertain themselves. And when we add the effects of giant e-commerce companies such as Amazon, Walmart, and Flipkart, creating a void in demand and supply.
Such a gap between demand and supply causes unwanted price hikes resulting in extra expenditure and undesirable expenses.
Everyone loves to save a little bit extra because, why not.
Who does not like some extra savings for themselves? It is where these credit cards come in to provide relief to your wallet.
Credit cards provide numerous advantages, including the ability to build credit, earn cash back, and provide fraud protection. When you consider the convenience of not having to carry cash and the opportunity to quickly track spending, you might wonder why anyone would want to pay with anything other than a card.
While using a credit card can make life easier, it also places a significant amount of responsibility on the spender. Credit cards can lead to debt, fees, and poor credit if they are used improperly. Knowing the benefits and drawbacks of credit cards is the first step toward ensuring that you get the most out of your plastic.
Benefit Of Credit Cards:
1. Huge Discounts:
Credit card companies acquire new customers by providing them huge discounts on online platforms. These discounts are very crucial for people who always look to save some money.
IndusInd Bank Card
Apply for a Credit Card with IndusInd Bank & get higher credit limits, no joining fees. Flexible Reward plans to choose from Shopping, Travel and Household spends.
Yes Bank Card
YES BANK Credit Card provides customers with great rewards, cashback, travel, shopping and elite credit cards. Benefits for dining, movie tickets, etc. Accumulated reward points can be redeemed against various gifts.
Axis Bank Card
Card that gives you the ticket to financial freedom ?. Axis Bank Credit Card offers you a variety of cards that suits your needs. Some advantages of these cards include: Welcome Benefits, Excited Cashback, Shopping and Travel Voucher
2. Interest-Free Period:
Credit card offers a wide range of interest-free periods. Some offer 45 days, while some offer 30 days interest-free period to use the amount on credit without any fees. It is one of the prime benefits of credit cards.
3. Build Credit:
Next of the many benefits of credit cards is that they can help you develop credit. Building credit usually necessitates the use of credit. Better interest rates on mortgages, vehicle loans, and credit cards, among other things, can be an advantage of having strong credit.
4. Fraud Protection:
Credit card providers, in many situations, have measures in place to protect you and your purchases against credit card fraud. Call your credit card company if you see charges you don’t recognize. If you can’t find your card, report it as soon as possible as lost or stolen.
5. No Use Of Cash:
The endless list of benefits of credit cards involves the minimal usage of cash. Using a credit card instead of paper currency is generally more convenient and takes up less space in a wallet than a stack of bills. Credit cards can be kept in your pocket, ready to be used at any time. Furthermore, if you misplace your card, your issuer can mail you a replacement. With currency, however, this is not the case.
6. Earn Rewards
The next on the list of benefits of Credit cards is the potential to earn rewards in the form of cashback or points, all for spending as you usually do. Many popular cards also offer sign-up bonuses that provide good points if you meet the spending requirements within the specified time frame.
7. Track Your Spendings:
All purchases on a credit card are tracked and recorded by the issuer. Having your transaction history — including the name of merchants, along with the amounts spent and dates — can make understanding your spending easier than recording every cash transaction on a ledger. Plus, there are tons of applications that use your spending to automatically create budgets, track subscriptions, and help you get a better idea of how you spend your money in general. But you need to have a record of your spending for the apps to work, and a digital document can often seamlessly integrate with the program and allow the app to work automatically.
However, credit cards aren’t only about incentives and sign-up bonuses. They are crucial financial tools that, if mishandled, can lead to debt and costs. Would you think a bank offers you such facilities if it weren’t beneficial for them? It’s critical to understand the drawbacks of credit cards.
Drawbacks Of Credit Cards:
1. Potential To Overspending Habits:
Credit cards can appear to be endless pools of cash — and if you handle them carelessly, you’ll end up in serious debt. If you use a credit card, keep track of your purchases to ensure you don’t spend more than you can afford.
2. Debt Trap:
One of the most popular ways to go into debt is through overspending on a credit card — and being “in debt” is probably not a place you want to be. Making a budget and checking in on where your money has gone regularly will help you avoid getting into debt. Monitoring your expenditure can assist you in keeping track of how and where you spend. It’s up to you whether you use that information to reduce unaffordable financial outflows.
3. High Fees and Interest:
Overspending can result in a balance being carried over that is frequently followed by interest charges. Interest (and fees) can build up credit to the point that it becomes unmanageable for the spender. Many credit card companies charge fees for late payments, balance transfers, cash advances, and foreign transactions, among other things, in addition to interest. Some card issuers may charge a fee only to use the card. Paying out your amount in full by the due date every month is the easiest method to prevent interest and many costs that can get you into trouble.
Learn How You Can Reduce The Fees Of Your Cards
An article by CNBC to help you to understand in depth about the fees and interests. Click the image to know more.
4. Affect Credit Score:
Improper credit card use can lower your credit ratings, making it more challenging to receive the best rates on (or even be approved for) things like mortgages, auto loans, and personal loans. Paying your bills late, not paying your bills at all, and utilizing too much of your available credit are all behaviors that can harm your credit score. Many other factors influence credit health, but some are virtually inextricably linked to credit card usage.
Full Disclosure:
The links to apply for the credit card is an affiliate service from OneCode of which the owner of Informed Nation is a member. When you apply for the cards, you may or may not travel to an intermediate page to add your details which add on to the customer database for Informed Nation. Such intermediate pages is at the discretion of the OneCode and may change.
Such database would help us to bring better financial products to you. If you are comfortable with sharing the details, then only apply for these cards. Thank you for your time.
How Credit Card Help You Earn Money?
When you pay your bill from your card rather than your bank, you allow your money to accrue interest in the savings account. Not only this, you get cash back or points for using your credit card, which results in additional money earnt by you.
You can use the same trick to earn more money:
Savings Trick
In this part, I’ll explain the mathematics behind the savings done when using a credit card. For this, I will take the monthly expense of as 20,000 Rupees. Let’s assume that the savings bank gives 7% interest on a savings account. The cashback offered is considered at 1%, which is usually what the maximum bank offers.
The interest on 20,000 Rupees at 7% interest can be determined as:
20000x(7/100)=1400
But this is for the whole year. For a single month, divide by 12:
1400/12=116.66
You will earn 116.66 as interest on your savings account. Assuming 1% cashback on your shopping of 20000, you will earn Rs 200.
The Total earning is therefore equal to 116.66+200=Rs 316.66
Your earnings per month do not seem like a much. But when you invest the amount on an index fund in India at a 15% annum return:
Your values will be as follows: (Amount is in Rupees)
You can use the SIP calculator below to play with numbers yourself.
Do note that the above calculation considers when you only invest Rs 316.66 per month.
The amount mentioned above does not seem like much, and I agree. But you have to look for the bigger picture here. These small habits of saving money, keeping your expenses in check, and not to mention the power of compound interest and its understanding, will help you earn money at a far better rate than you have right now.
How To Save More:
A phrase goes like this: A penny saved is a penny earned. In this method, we will use the same philosophy to build our wealth, little by little.
When you go to an e-commerce website and see the discounts by the bank, take that extra amount and invest it. The whole purpose of saving money is to preserve it for future use.
Just say you want to purchase a phone for 10000 rupees. You do not know if you have any offers on any e-commerce platform. Also, you cannot depend solely on these discounts every time for your purchase. Many times, urgency supersedes the price point. You need to have the money to be able to purchase the product. If any offer exists, it’s a bonus.
So let’s assume you have a 10% discount on your HDFC credit card. So when making the payment, you only need to pay Rs 9000/-. What you need to do, is voluntarily take that Rs 1000/- and invest it. This way, you can increase the corpus to compound for the long term.
You can still use the same method when your credit card only offers redemption in coupons or e-vouchers. Take the same amount of money you are getting an e-voucher, and invest. This method will again increase your corpus and your odds of having more money in the future.
Read More: Finance Education Series
Conclusion:
Credit cards, like most things in life, have advantages and disadvantages. A credit card can be a vital and beneficial financial instrument if you use it wisely and rightly.
Credit cards can cause more harm than good if you let your spending get out of hand and aren’t organized about handling payments and accounts.
If you decide to apply for a credit card, make sure you choose the best one for you.
