> the reality is they should have already "figured out" how to play the system and just farmed the reward points from credit cards and immediately pay them off without incurring any interest.

I did this for a while after being bitten a couple times for not having a credit history.

However, I recently stopped. I still keep one card around and active just to maintain my score… just in case. However, spending $10k for $200 in rewards… I don’t really care. That’s mostly a tool to get people to justify more spending.

I’ve quite liked using the debit card and seeing the number go down when I spend, it makes more sense intuitively, and I always know exactly what I have. I had a debit card stolen about 20 years ago; I was able to get the charges reversed, no different from a credit card in my experience. It’s on the Visa network.

I would cancel my last credit card, but I don’t want to deal with cell phone deposits and other nonsense, like I had to in the past.