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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Good luck getting airplane tickets without a credit card.  [/quote]

Dave Ramsey tells you to get a debit card tied to your checking account.

You  can buy airline tickets with a debit card (like a bank card with a visa logo on it). You can check into a hotel with one too, but they put a $300-$500 hold on your card.

I don't know how it works with rental cars. I think they put a hold on that too.[/quote]

Not everyone is comfortable giving direct access to their checking account like that.  How do you dispute charges?[/quote]

The same way I do with a credit card. You call the number on the back of your card and say you didn't make that purchase. They close your card and send you a new one.[/quote]

The drawback of this approach is that you're out the money while the dispute is being resolved so depending on the size of a fraudulent charge it can be an issue.

I thought his issue with credit cards is that people can't control their spending and making people use a cash system makes them think more about what they're purchasing.  I think you lose a lot of that with a debit card and the only major difference is that you can't run up that much of a balance beyond what you have in your account depending on your bank's overdrafting rules.  [/quote]

This is where your emergency savings comes into play. I have never had a fraudulent charge greater than 3-6 months worth of living expenses. You "borrow" from your emergency savings and pay yourself back the following week when the money is returned to your checking account. I also don't keep a high balance in my checking account: just what I need to cashflow my bills. The rest gets moved to savings/investments immediately. So at most, we're talking about $5,000 or so. In my experience, credit card fraud is taken out in small amounts first before they go for big purchases, and even the big purchases aren't big enough to wipe out my entire checking account balance.

But I do agree with your second point: using real cash is better, unless you are in a situation where you can't (travel, online purchases, etc). I think debit card use is more appropriate after you have addressed the behaviors that got you into debt in the first place, and learned self-control by using real cash for everything.[/quote]

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