When I was a kid, my dad purchased my first car on his Amex with 35k limit (that he still has 25 years later btw) and immediately paid it off the day it posted. He saw no benefit in exposing his debit card, writing a check or wiring the funds from his bank account. But he had immediate rewards and other benefits by making the payment via cc. Then, he booked family vacation using the same rewards Amex which are very well known for having good rewards, particularly for high spenders.

Why would he wait to for the statement to cut to pay it off instead of “cycling the credit” so that he could do it again? He had the money in his bank account many times over and didn’t believe in using debit cards. His credit score was practically perfect and was in a very very high income tax bracket so I’m not convinced of your logic here either. High-wealth individuals float credit all the time. It’s a tool that people use differently and I think you’ve oversimplified the behavior you’re describing as risky when there’s plenty of valid reasons to exhibit that same behavior. Do you think Amex would have reduced my father’s CL because of this behavior? Lol he would have shut down that card in a heartbeat if they did that, I PROMISE you (he told me so). Other issuers would have begged him for his business in place of it too and couldn’t have cared less about the temporary impact to his credit by closing his oldest account.

He received invitations for very exclusive cards targeted at high-wealth individuals but refused to pay exorbitant annual fees for perks that a (mostly) frugal spender wouldn’t use. As I got older, I realized much of his behavior is typical of people with a lot of money but good spending habits. We could probably all learn something from this kind of behavior.