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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

It does, but that payment takes several days to clear and messes up your bank's analytics. I use a modern bank that gives me a real-time overview of my spending and categories it, but this all goes out the window if all your spending is on a credit card and the only thing your bank sees is a single payment (to your credit card provider) once a month.

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Not a very modern system if it cannot account for a credit card.

If you’re not using a credit card, you’re:

- Adopting significant risk (debit card protections are not as strong as credit card protections)

- Failing to establish a credit history

- Giving away a significant amount of money.

Credit card transaction fees are included in all prices.

I use a card that gives me 2% cash back on all purchases — effectively, most or all of the transaction fee.

Other countries have stronger/ better enforced consumer protection laws so credit card chargebacks are less necessary.

I fail to understand how you are giving away 'significant' money by spending from your own account? Are you referring to being able to earn interest on savings for the month before you have to settle the credit line?

I don't enable these bank analytics (sweden) since that accepts their laundry list of terms for that service, suddenly opening for the bank to mine that data. Without agreeing to it, I have more protection.

The vast majority of my monthly spending (with a few notable exceptions like mortgage and electricity bill) goes on a single credit card. That card's website and app also gives me an overview of my spending and categorizes it. What you say can work in the credit card world.

And as the other commenter's reply says, all my credit cards pay me cash back or a points system which is redeemable for things with high cash value. There's a real quantifiable cost to not using them.

Does your bank not offer a credit card?

Here in the US it is common for banks to both provide traditional banking services and credit cards, and when you open your banking app, both accounts are together.

>I use a modern bank that gives me a real-time overview of my spending and categories it

You depend on your bank for this type of stuff? Isn't that basically begging for vendor lock-in? It makes far more sense to have a vendor-agnostic solution (eg. mint or personal spreadsheet), so your analytics aren't at the whims of your bank.

I don't have enough money to care seriously about this yet, so I don't mind if my bank discontinues the service (and can reevaluate then). However, in the meantime it's there and it's convenient so I use it and the simplicity of my financial "stack" (one account for everything) makes it work well.

A credit card would break that and introduce unnecessarily complexity including another company that I'd rather not have to deal with (also, I'm not aware of any modern credit card providers that would give me a decent experience).

Almost every major US bank also issues Visa or MasterCard credit cards, and integrates spending on those cards into their account analytics.

In Australia at least, all banks/institutions provide those transaction analytics as the registered business number of the company you transact with has a category attached to it by our tax office.

If I look at my recent expenses in my banking app, I can see that I got a coffee (food&beverage), bought fuel (transport) and paid freight cost on a case of wine from my frequent flyer miles rewards program (incorrectly classed as travel).

It's not 100% accurate but gives a good enough overview in the app week by week, and I sit down quarterly to look at things properly in a spreadsheet.

Just a customer, but I use Cap1 and I can make a payment on my card and unless it's Fri/Sat/Sun, it will post to my bank the next day.

It always shows as pending in the morning and clears that evening.

I can also make a payment and it will update my CC limit the same day if needed.

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