>>Let’s say your credit card balance is $1,000 and you can only pay the minimum payment each month — around $20 to $25.
I'm with Bill: credit card for everything as long as you always pay it off every month which avoids interest and penalties.
Paying it off every month is little different from paying with cash or debit card, except you can delay payment for a month and you get airpoints or other benefits.
As Sammie notes, you also get fraud protection, though my US debit card also has fraud protection when used for purchases.
Many credit cards also offer travel insurance, unlike debit cards or cash.
It all adds up: I get comprehensive travel insurance for my international business travel and accumulated Airpoints covered kids' airfares to Hawaii last year....
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
