Living without a credit card

I have been a member of LinkedIn.com for a few years now.

Once or twice it has threatened to provide me with the job opportunity for which I have been looking, and with some adaptation it could be extremely useful.

I belong to them as a "basic member". That means I get a number of services which are available free of charge. I could consider having a "premium service" membership which would offer me more possibilities.

Once in a while they offer me a month's free "premium" membership. I was often tempted to try it and finally did. The only problem being that they wanted it confirming with a credit card (think Visa or Mastercard) / charge card (think American Express).

Slight problem at this point - I do not have either! I had an Amex card until 2010 - previously I had my bank account still in the Netherlands and the Amex card was also issued in the Netherlands. Once I finally switched everything to Germany I saw no point in having a charge card - especially given my other financial difficulties.

I have not had credit cards like Visa and Mastercard for over 12 years, and I am glad to do without them. You can just as easily use your bank card - free! - as is common practice in Germany to pay for goods straightaway. If you do not want to pay for them straightaway, my advice is to do without the goods entirely. It is summat of a fool's paradise to pay interest charges, particularly at the massive rip-off rate charged by the credit card companies, as well as the cost of the article that you want, and to have to pay an annual subscription fee for the card as well.

Amex of course, as a charge card, does not charge interest, although an annual fee is still expected. But with Visa and Mastercard, if you check back over the years just what you have paid in interest charges and then think of what you could have done with that money if it hadn't been wasted like that? If your annual interest charges were 200 Euro / dollars / pounds usw - you could have bought goods to that amount. Or put it in a savings account and got interest on it yourself!

I personally learned this the hard way years ago, although part of it was almost forced upon you as during the abominable Thatcher years it was nearly impossible to be able to pay even your basic bills with the money you had available. The start of the debt dependence which has overtaken the UK to such an extent that personal debt is now at least as serious a problem as government debt!

In Germany credit cards are much rarer than in many other countries. Debt culture is not encouraged to the same extent, although its presence can be felt still using more traditional loans and the like.

Not having a credit card can be a confounded nuisance when dealing with international companies based outside Germany though - Internet organisations like LinkedIn for example (I can quote several others of encountering this problem). With the limited online purchases that I do make in Germany I use my bank card and make a direct transfer, but once you want to cross borders it is another matter.

And not having a credit / charge card also draws the strange response from people outside Germany - "How do you live without one?".

Answer - "quite easily"! If I were earning more and wanted to do more with my life, I could still live like this. And think of all the rip-off interest charges that I could manage to avoid as well. I could actually start to invest with that money - in a small way at least!