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> if you ever try to explain how a credit card works to a 14-year-old, you’ll quickly remember just how complicated and strange they are. Are credit cards real
by rurp 4y ago
> if you ever try to explain how a credit card works to a 14-year-old, you’ll quickly remember just how complicated and strange they are.
Are credit cards really as complicated for most people as this article claims? The explanation I got as a teenager was something like, "Instead of paying with cash you can use credit from a card, then at the end of the month you pay off all of those charges to the bank at once. Technicaly you don't have to pay it off immediately, but if you wait you'll also pay a horrible amount of extra fees; which you never want to do".
It was pretty easy to grok at the time, and is how people should approach credit cards 99.999% of the time.
Once a person gets older and has built up some credit they can look for a card with good rewards, which for most people will just be looking for the highest cash back percent they can get.
- alxhill 4y agoI think the complexity arrives when the 14-year-old asks the follow up question "why?"
- asdff 4y agoBecause if you get scammed its easier dealing with a credit card company than your bank
- dotopotoro 4y agoWhy? (5 “why”s in total)
- asdff 4y agoBecause when your credit card is scammed, its the credit card companies money that has been stolen so they are want to get it back. When its your debit card being scammed, its your money being stolen, and any help to get it back is just a cost center for the bank so they don't really invest in this side of their business like credit card companies do.
- graypegg 4y agoThough couldn’t a teenager (older than 14, but still) understand the value that deferring paying for something is useful in context to a part time job? I would only get paid at certain days, and knowing generally what I’ll get at the end of the month after tips and hours, I could budget for that number rather than what I have in the moment.
- actionablefiber 4y agoThen the teenager might ask, sure, that's credit like a bar tab or whatever and credit is convenient for all kinds of reasons, it's just, why do you need a whole other company to get involved and issue a specialized card to do that? Why doesn't the bank just say "we'll let you overdraft up to $4000 without any fuss but you'll have to pay interest on the negative balance"?