Do you mean via credit cards, or on the whole, including a mortgage? We have a mortgage, but have made all but 1 or 2 credit card payments in 20+ years - we forgot to pay a $50 bill once, IIRC. Outside of the mortgage, we've never spent money that wasn't already in our bank account - not even "it's coming in our next paycheck". Our credit scores are fine.

I mean just credit cards generally. You have to play the MasterCard/Visa game or else lenders won’t rent to you. I’ve been denied many rental properties I could very easily afford because “oh someone else applied and their credit score was over 800”

Only in the US, building Credit isn't as important in other countries AFAIK.

You're not forced to use credit cards irresponsibility to benefit from the credit score boost they provide.

Sure, but you have to play the Visa/MasterCard game. We allow them to rule the country so much that if you’re not an active customer of theirs you can’t get a roof over your head. I don’t think any other company in the world has that much power.

That's only in the US. The few other countries that have credit scoring mostly have negative scores (basically, a lender can check if a prospective borrower has failed to pay loans/taxes/etc. previously). And it is only restricted to lenders.

It's a much better system than the dystopian American one where prospective employers and renters check your score, which is built based on a ton of relatively private information, to determine if you're worthy of renting or working. And people have to game the system by minmaxing credit cards to be able to have the chance of renting or even working. It's utter nonsense that doesn't serve anyone other than the credit card companies and credit score bureaus.

You can pretty trivially set credit cards to auto-pay and use them as debit cards, with the only difference being a delay in any overdraft penalty.

Sure, if you overspend you get heavily penalized, and that's not great, but you don't have to spend a dime of interest to build a respectable credit score.

Again, you’re being forced into playing the Visa/MC game.

There are other ways to build credit, credit cards are just the easiest and most convenient.

Cut the BS please. I do not have to use CC when I do not have money and still have perfect credit score. Personally I do use my CC only when there is no other option and I pay it off immediately after making a purchase. My credit score is perfect and I've never spent using CC more than I have on my account.

You’ve been playing the Visa/MC game for 20+ years to achieve a perfect score? You might then agree they have an overly large amount of influence in life?

I did not play game to achieve a score. came naturally. As already said I only use CC when there is no other option.

But yes I do agree that Visa/MC are an abomination and I would prefer them to die. Along with the idea of credit score.