This weekend I found, by way of Get Rich Slowly, a post from Coleman Unlimited that intrigued me about the usefulness of credit cards. The post’s basic point, lost on me when I made my New Years’ resolutions, is that some credit cards do, in fact, pay you money!

Upon checking my account online, I found that my credit card has earned between 0.35 and one percent cash back on all my purchases. My debit card, for comparison, earns half a percent.

In light of this realization, I’ve changed the “terms and conditions” of my resolutions… I intend to use my credit card as often as I spend money (which I still intend to limit as much as possible), in order to gain the benefit of its cash rewards policy. However, it is still my resolution never to carry a balance on the card. What point is there in receiving one percent rewards and then paying a fourteen or fifteen percent penalty?