--- title: Why You Should Have A Credit Card | TIME description: MONEY's Taylor Tepper tries to convince his colleague Jake Davidson of the benefits to owning a credit card. canonical: https://time.com/video/UOdRcxdm/ og:title: Why You Should Have A Credit Card og:description: MONEY's Taylor Tepper tries to convince his colleague Jake Davidson of the benefits to owning a credit card. og:url: https://time.com/video/UOdRcxdm/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UOdRcxdm/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why You Should Have A Credit Card twitter:description: MONEY's Taylor Tepper tries to convince his colleague Jake Davidson of the benefits to owning a credit card. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UOdRcxdm/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Why You Should Have A Credit Card > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Why You Should Have A Credit Card [Watch (HLS stream): Why You Should Have A Credit Card](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UOdRcxdm.m3u8) (3:08)  _Published 2015-01-08. MONEY's Taylor Tepper tries to convince his colleague Jake Davidson of the benefits to owning a credit card._ --- Jul 27, 2023 5:44 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Top Credit Cards of 2018 ](/video/AtgX3LSt/) ### Top Credit Cards of 2018 [Can I Get a Credit Card if I Have No Credit History?](/video/nK2kWnwK/) ### Can I Get a Credit Card if I Have No Credit History? [Credit Card & Credit Score Myths](/video/PbCkIZQb/) ### Credit Card & Credit Score Myths --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Welcome to Millennial Money Minute. I'm Taylor Tipper and today I'm here with my colleague Jake Davidson. How's it going? It's going well. How are you? I'm doing well. [ LAUGH ] Excellent. And today we are talking to Jake cause we learned that Jake does not own a credit card. Why don't you own a credit card? I don't wanna go into debt. I feel like credit card companies, they just want me to. Spend on things. Yeah. And just get behind, not be able to pay it back, and just trap me forever. They're out to get you. They're out to get me. Is what you think. [ COUGH ] King Bobo, say the word. And you're this vulnerable, delicate flower, and they're gonna rain down on all your petals. They're gonna rain on all my petals. See, I'm going to try to convince you now with. Two main reasons, and my little sub reason, why you're wrong and why you're not necessarily stupid, which what is what I thought you were when we first started this. Understandably. Yeah. rather, you're just naive. Okay. So, reason number one. You will one day need to borrow money to pay for something big, and your ability to borrow that money, for banks to give you that money, will be determined- By how able you are to pay back that loan, they get that information based on your credit history and how long you own the credit. And, how you interact your credit. One way to improve your credit score is to have a credit card and pay it off each month. [ MUSIC ] And that way you will show that you are credit worthy and that you can, your, you can be responsible enough to borrow. So number two, the second big reason why you need to is rewards. You are spending in cash. You don't need to do that. The bank will give you. Cash back and give you miles. They will give you points which you can turn into gift cards and other things like that. Just for spending money cuz, and this goes into the third, you know, this is the third little addendum reason. It's because they don't want you to go into debt. They don't want you be delinquent. They want you just to spend that card over and over so they can make money on the interchange fees. And as a, as an incentive to do that. They will give you cash back, they will give you miles. So not trying to trap me in some kind of prison of debt. No. They do- A flower prison. They do, they do not wanna put you in a flower prison garden of debt. They want you to, to grow free and sprout. And bloom. Well that's what I'm about, so. Yeah. How do I get one of these things? Do I go to a bank? Well, you can apply for a credit card by going online, to a bank. To a bank's website. But I would recommend checking out our feature from a few months ago, the best credit card feature. In it we highlight one card that is sort of the best card for new people to credit, which you are. And that way you can get something that's appropriate for you. And then a few months later if you know, maybe a year later when you sort developed a credit history, and you show yourself to be worthy, you can go for maybe some bigger fair. Sounds good. Alright well I'm glad that we've convinced you. Me too. I know. And thank you guys so much for joining. Until next time. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Why You Should Have A Credit Card","description":"MONEY's Taylor Tepper tries to convince his colleague Jake Davidson of the benefits to owning a credit card.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UOdRcxdm/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-01-08T23:06:20.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UOdRcxdm.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/UOdRcxdm/","duration":"PT3M8S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/UOdRcxdm/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```