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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

Fair points.

> The 3% is good, but you have to pay $5 a month, so equivalent $60 annual fee.

It's $50 a year, which isn't nothing, but more than pays for itself with either the 3% IRA match or 1k free margin. Understandably, not everyone wants to invest, so point taken.

> I assume thats using the high end cards with fairly hefty annual fees, or category cashback.

The only one with a fee is Amex Blue Cash Preferred, which I use for 6% groceries. The rest are store cards(AMZ/WM) or free category cards(of which you can often get multiple, oddly enough). For example USBank Cash+ for 5% back on all utilities and electronics, year round. Then there are some that automatically just 5% your highest spend category.

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That looks like a a crazy amount of cards. I carry exactly one debet card in my wallet (.eu) and use it for everything.

It is, but I typically only carry two - the 3% back and the grocery 6% back as the others are mainly online or automated.

> I carry exactly one debet card in my wallet (.eu) and use it for everything

Not sure about eu but in the US that's generally not advised, due to the semantics of how the cards work and legal fraud liabilities. Basically, if someone skims your debit card, they take your money and you have to sometimes fight to get it back - but still, you are without the money for a time. If someone skims your credit card, they're stealing from the bank, and for obvious reasons they seem much more eager to investigate - but you still have your money.

I only ever use debit cards these days when I need cash from the ATM.

Here it's about the same. Even with a skimmed credit card you're on the hook for the bill, there's no chargeback. But skimming is really rare because we no longer have the old insecure systems of card imprinting, signature, magstripes etc. It's all chip&pin or contactless.

I don't think anyone I know uses a credit card for daily purchases here in Spain.

Skimming is rare in the US too, as tap to pay is at 90% of payment terminals, and chip reading is at 99% of payment terminals (guesstimates based on the last time I swiped my card).

Yes but the magstripe is still present thus it can be skimmed.

Here in Europe a lot of cards don't have a magstripe anymore, or it is deactivated (containing no relevant payment info but a functional header)

My bank asked if I still wanted it in case I'd travel to the US or some other countries but I never travel outside of EU anymore so I didn't want one.

> Basically, if someone skims your debit card

I've had this happen to me and the bank in question asked me a couple of questions about where it happened (an ATM in a really dark location!) but quickly reversed the charges. Happened in London, so was OS to boot.

That was a few years ago don't know if its different now.

Using debit card for online purchases has substantial negatives and credit cards are much preferred (this may be US specific), but in the EU credit cards are a different kettle of fish and not as good as US cards.

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