Yes indeed.
Not only by earning reward points.
Credit card also offers (at least) two more avenues for saving / making money:
- Float from deferred payment
- Cashbacks / discounts offered by many merchants / banks for paying with credit card as against debit card / cash.
But these savings will evaporate very quickly if you incur interest charges and / or surcharge for using your credit card. So don’t if saving money is your goal for using credit card. It’s easy to avoid both interest and surcharge.
- By paying your credit card monthly balance in full, you can avoid interest charges.
- Greedy merchants will try to slap a surcharge for paying with credit card. I fob them off with the following arguments presented in How To Fight Card Payment Surcharge And Take #CashlessIndia To Next Level. Maybe you can, too.
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I pay annual fees to the Issuer for my credit card. Will you reimburse me those fees?
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You get fire insurance for signing up a Merchant Agreement and incurring MDR. What will you give me extra if I pay you Surcharge?
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If I pay for something with a credit card today, the Issuer pays you after a day or two. Suppose I abscond when I get the bill from the Issuer after 30 days, you don’t refund what you collected from the Issuer before.
In short, I emphasize that the credit card model DOES NOT WORK on a back-to-back basis.
Let me also copy-paste my comment at https://www.quora.com/Why-do-middle-class-conservative-Indians-avoid-credit-cards/answer/Mosin-Mansuri-1/comment/119276673 because it’s partially relevant to the current context.
I’m a huge fan of credit cards. I got my first credit card in the late 1980s. During the next 30 years, I’ve been using credit cards for shopping and bill payments at every available opportunity. I have not used a debit card even once for these usage scenarios. I have also never incurred a single penny in interest charges on my credit card spend because I’ve never revolved my credit card outstandings even once. On the other hand, I’ve earned huge rewards and bolstered my credit history by using credit cards. Back in the day, credit cards did tempt people to overspend. I had to exercise caution to avoid succumbing. But those days are long gone. Nowadays, I get extra discounts for paying with credit card compared to cash and other payment methods.
All in all, I believe credit card is absolutely the best personal finance management tool ever invented. Of course, it calls for a bit of discipline. But, then, no PFM tool will work for people who lack even that much discipline.