One common concern that people have when thinking about getting rid of their credit cards is that they won’t be able to rent a car. While it’s true that some car rental companies require you to have a credit card to rent one, not all of them do.
We recently reserved a rental car for our trip to Finland. When looking at the different options online, some companies clearly said they required a credit card and that debit cards were not accepted. We haven’t had a credit card for over 10 years now so obviously that wouldn’t work for us. After digging a little deeper, we found a company that said debit cards are accepted at some of their locations. So, we gave them a call to see if our location was one of the ones that do accept debit cards. And guess what, they did!
So, we picked up our car the night before our trip with no problem and dropped it off at the airport before our flight. The customer service was great and pick up and drop off only took a few minutes each. There was no issue at all with us using our debit card.
There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find a car rental company that accepts debit cards, but you might be surprised to learn that some do. And, is that really a good reason to hang on to a credit card? Just because you might not be able to rent a car? What would we have done if we couldn’t have found a company that would accept a debit card? Getting a credit card is out of the question, so we would have come up with an alternative plan.
For us it’s just not worth it to go back into debt by using a credit card even if we promise ourselves that we’ll pay it off each month. According to the Federal Reserve’s Household Debt and Credit Report, the total outstanding credit card debt in America as of the second quarter of 2025 was $1.21 trillion. How many of the people included in that number do you think went into it thinking they would pay off the card every month? That is the most common response I hear from people when talking about how using credit cards isn’t a problem for them. Are there some people who are able to pay off their balance every month? Sure. But it’s obviously not happening for a large majority of people. For me and my household, we will not be part of that statistic.
What other options could you think of if you took using a credit card off the table?
*Thanks to Budget for being so great to work with and for accepting debit cards! (not an ad, just an honest review of our experience)