1. Higher leverage for your wallet. You don’t need carry a pile of cash anywhere you go, with this amazing plastic card, you can make payment on the amount a few times the cash you could carry in your wallet. Of course, you should not use it on the amount you can’t clear off on before the deadline. Otherwise you will need to pay interest.
2. Spending visibility. Average people will say that there is less control on the amount of spending when using credit card, I beg the different. I will say using credit card on every spending you make massively increase your spending visibility! Usually credit card companies will provide an online portal for user to view their statement up to daily basis, while the least credit card companies provide is sending you the paper statement. With this statement updated on daily or monthly basis, it is much easier for us to monitor our own spending pattern.
3. Convenience Input Data for Budget Planning – You can use credit card statement as historical input for your future budget planning. Best thing is you don’t pay for credit card statements. Bank track it down and send it to you, when you are minding your own business. If you review the credit card statement up to 4 months back, you can observe the pattern or trend in your spending habit. Is it increasing or staying average? If it is increasing, which items causes the jump in spending. Then ask the questions: Is the surge of amount causes by one-time item? Is it avoidable in subsequent month?  List out and discount the one-time and avoidable items, then you can project how much you will spend in each subsequent month.
4. Credit Card as Cash Flow tool. Credit card provides a lot of flexibility in term of cash flow. Let say if you are a freelancer who get paid irregularly, credit card enable cash upfront for you to smooth out any urgent payments. Be sure you can make it in time for debt settlement before due. However, a little bit of interest can be unavoidable some times. One must know how to balance the cost of money with the urgency of usage. If the urgency far outweighs interest rate then paying the interest charge is still justifiable. For example: What to do if you are not able to pay the rental in two months time? The interest is probably ten dollars if you don’t pay in the first month, while you will probably get kicked out from the rental house if you don’t pay for 1 month.     
5. Get Rewarded for Mindful Spending. While you spend on things you need, you also earn points on the purchase you pay with credit card. Most of the credit card companies have such system. One example of redeemable items is cash voucher. It is probably not much, but the thing is, this is something extra you get back while you spend. If you pay off credit card debt every month, this reward is like interest the banks have to pay you back. You don’t get those things by spending cash. Of course, don’t spend credit card for the sake of collecting points otherwise you will be out of control.

Read How Not To Be Millionaire on how you will never get rich by misusing credit card.

Average dollar per customer - Average dollar per customer is the average amount of money one customer spends in a transaction of purchase. For a store to be more profitable, one of the sales variables they need to improve is the average dollar per customer. There are many strategies to increase this figure. Below are some of the examples:

1. Buy two get one free.
2. Buy one get another with 30% discount.
3. Arrange a series of related products together that are interrelated and make them seems like interdependent.
4. Placement of product in the right place.
5. Use of wording 1: Clearance sales.
6. Use of wording 2. Early bird package, first come first served, first 100 customers discount, etc.

 Giving out great discount – For the first two strategies, it seems the seller is giving out great deal by giving great discount but actually they entice you to buy a few similar products that you probably don’t need. Let say buy one and get the second with 30% discount, if they get 40% profit margin when you buy an item, then they get you to buy 2. The combine margin becomes 50% with 25% margin per item (25% = 40% – 30% discount divided by 2). Even though their margin per item is lowered, but their combined profit margin increased by 20% (from 40 to 50%) which also increase the average dollar spent per customer. A very good example is McDonald, the price of a burger is very low, but in the process of ordering, a well trained staff will usually get you to buy the combo meal, have an upgrade to the size, get a sundae for dessert and spend a little bit more to get the super cute toy. That explains when you only want a $3 burger for lunch instead you came out from the restaurant spending $20. That’s a whopping 600% increase in average dollar spent per customer. By attracting 100 customers to do the same, how much profit you as consumer help them to make?

Strategic placement of products - For the third and forth strategy, it is usually employed in retail store or shopping complexes, for example in branded clothing boutique and grocery store. Have you ever wondered why all the stuff you need are all conveniently arrange near to each other? For example, when you buy a pair of jeans, there are racks displaying belts that go well with the jeans. When you buy a working shirt, there are cufflink, tie, and slack being placed adjacent to each other. This is because shopper who buys a pair of jeans usually needs a new belt to go together and buyer who buys a working shirt will likely to get a tie or a new cufflink. By putting near each other, it is very convenient for the shopper to grab it and it is also reminder for the shopper to buy more, thus increasing average dollar per customer.

Have you ever noticed some shop that is on sale usually don’t display the items on sales at store front, instead they place those items at the end/back of the shop. This is no coincidence or by random, in fact this is cleverly designed by marketing expert. First of all, a store that is on sale will attract lots of attention; it lures customers into the store that is the first step. Many people will go into the store even they never planned to until they see the sales banner. Usually the non sales items will be placed at the store front. The common behavior of shopper is that they spontaneously have a look at those non-sales items before they walk to the sales section. By the time they are there, they probably have a lot more to pay for.

Emotion trigger – Human spends when reacted to certain emotions; excitement, fear and greed. The clever use of wording can trigger the emotion in human. How do you feel when you see the word “clearance sales” or “stock clearance”? If the store on sale is your favorite clothing brand, you are likely to feel excited and deep down, emotion of greed. How many stores do you think that put on this banner are really selling the stock in cost price? The answer is, not a single one of them. Do you think cost in operating a store is free? Of course not. Or have you noticed is there any difference between clearance sales and normal sales? You might be surprise that some claimed clearance sales are selling at the same or higher price than normal sales. That’s why, even though it is a ”clearance sales”, they can still make a good margin of profit from you, and because of clever use of word, more customers will flock into the store, thus more potential buyers.

Emotional Urgency – Another clever strategy employed is to create a sense of emotional urgency in consumers, the emotion that combines greed and fear. I’m sure you come across advertisement with words like; early bird package or first 100 customers discount. The advertisement might tell you it is a great deal and there is only little stock left before it lasts. Well, some are true but many of them are not. The aims of designing such words are to set an emotional urgency in human mind. People who hear or see this will usually commit to buying mode in rush for fear the deal will end, even though they might not need it (greed). The worse thing is; it might not be that great of a deal as it claims after reconsider.

In my early article I wrote about emotional resiliency in spending control.  In order to further boosting emotional resiliency it is also very important to understand the sales and marketing strategies being used on you, so you can use it to protect against it. There is a Chinese proverb sounds like this:

In order to understand yourself you need to understand what you are up  against.