The Benefits of Multiple Credit Cards

Using multiple credit cards does more than make it easy to spend your money, they also make it easy to get a clearer picture of where your money is going.  To keep track of your spending, use two or three widely recognized credit cards like Visa, Mastercard or Discover and assign different expenses to different credit cards.  For example, putting only media related expenses like magazine subscriptions, DVD's, cable, internet, music downloads etc. on one credit card shows you how much of your income is going towards entertainment.   

If someone steals your credit card information to make purchases, assigning different credit cards to different expenses helps to dentify where the problem probably occurred. If the credit card that was used illegally was one you used only in restaurants for example, you will know after reporting the incident to your credit card company to start eating at a different restaurants or pay cash if dining at a place that probably stole your credit card information is far less painful than doing your own cooking.  Another way to assign different categories to different credit cards would be to use one credit  card for online purchases and a separate credit card for brick and mortal stores

If you have a part time business such as a Mary Kay franchise, don't combine business related expenses such as the costs of buying products, promotional materials postage etc. with your personal expenses.  Have one credit card strictly for business.  To get an idea of how much money you are really making from your business, add up your sales for the month then deduct your monthly credit card charges from your sales.  If a part time business earns enough income to be reported for taxes, then having one credit card used solely for business expenses makes it easier to identify and report those expenses when doing your taxes.   

For all those financial advisers who insist everyone keep one credit card for emergencies and put the rest through the shredder, I would like to point out that no one credit card is accepted everywhere so having different major cards increase chances that one of them will be accepted.