Not surprised that those countries suffer from government shutdowns over how much the debt ceiling is raised.
The difference is that parties that try to pull that in Germany not only loose elections, but are punished so hard by voters that they can't even get over the necessary 5% requirement in the next election.
Have a look what happened to the FDP after they pushed through lower taxes for hotels.
Similar cards carry similar benefits, I'm sure. All you have to do to reap them is get the card, use it instead of your debit, then pay it off appropriately.
And in the event that your card is stolen, a credit card is always better than a debit card, because then money isn't stolen from your own personal bank accounts.
Signing into some unnecessary additional financial product with comically obsolete interest rates, just to manually repay it in the random timeframe in which the (still unnecessary) credit is free sounds like a bad idea.
It's probably only there to nudge people into paying interest on money they already have.
In practical terms, because in the US the handling of debit card fraud and credit card fraud is vastly different.
In the case of debit card fraud the money is gone from your account and you then spend some months trying to get it back. In the meantime, you don't have that money.
In the case of credit card fraud, you contact the credit card company, they reverse the charges, and then it's their problem after that point, not yours.
Assuming you have any self-discipline at all, a credit card is a _much_ better idea than a debit card in the US.
> Isn't the best credit history one where you never need credit in the first place?
The best credit history, if being used for the sane "will this person make timely payments on this loan?" reason, would consist of a history of timely payments on exactly this type of loan, with no debt outstanding right now.
Never needing credit before may mean you always had lots of money, or that you simply never tried to do anything that involved any large amounts of money and now you want to do such a thing....
If I'm going to loan you $1,000 I'd like to get references, talk to all the other people you've borrowed money from and ask them if you paid it back to show you are able to handle debt. You get other people to vouch for you that you are good on that $1,000. If you have nobody to vouch for you I'd be more hesitant to loan you money. Or ask you for a higher interest rate.
This gives you an incentive to borrow money and always pay it back. In fact just having an open line of credit you aren't using makes you look better. "I have the opportunity to max out my cards but I am not."
Its perverse but it does make logical sense. Its a different kind of responsible.
The other reason people use cards is many cards, as an incentive to get you to use them, give you perks. For example, airline miles, hotel points, cash back, warranty extension, price protection, purchase protection, rental car insurance, etc, etc.
Handling debt responsibly is a different skill from handling cash responsibly. When it comes time to buy a home, for example, which 99% of people will need credit to do, the banks want to see that you can handle debt responsibly, since that's what you're taking on.
Edit: Also, see my reply to GP comment that explains some of the other benefits of using a credit card.
Obviously it shouldn't be this way, it should be possible to save and buy these things outright. But since it effectively isn't (for many people, in many places) I wouldn't fault people for taking on debt to do things like put a roof over their head or get to work on time reliably.
On the other hand: The government shutdown because of the debt ceiling seems just like "Stop hitting yourself" on the playground.
And Germany's budget is far from balanced.
"Germany recorded a Government Budget surplus equal to 0.70 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2015. "
While it's true that the budget is not balanced, a 0.7%/GDP surplus is pretty darn close.
The article speaks of consumer debt, I spoke of consumer debt.
Government debt is a different thing, and a government without any debt doesn't sound like a wise thing if it is even possible in such a highly integrated and globalised world.
However the fact that the government jumps through all sorts of hoops to be able to say the budget is balanced is at least an interesting indicator that it does seem to matter to enough people.
Otherwise even the US would have a balanced budget and no debts. (Ignoring the fact that the US is the main force behind trying to change the account rules to make them look less bad.)
Hmm?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-17/germany-pl...
