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Comment by dsizzle | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it - you fully cancel the card? Or do you mean you just get the credit card to issue a new one? If that's the case, then I don't the "burner" aspect. That's just normal usage. If the former, what advantage does that provide? Is it not in your name? If there's some fraudulent charge but you just bail on the card rather than go through the normal process, it looks like non-payment and affects your credit.

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Paraphrasing a lot, I think the advice is to have one credit card for scheduled payments and things, and not take that out of the house. That way if your out and about card gets replaced, you won't need to go through and update all your scheduled payments.

I can't be the only one that uses my once-every-18-month credit card cancellation to help me track down the services that I forgot I had subscribed to.

Unless you're dropping the account completely, it's not super effective, because card issuers participate in services to update your subscriptions to newly issued numbers.

Or you could just... look at your statement?

My card number and expiration get skimmed at, I assume, gas pumps and such. I call my issuer, tell them the card has been compromised, we review charges and throw out the fraudulent one(s) and they cancel that card number. The underlaying account remains in place, they overnight be a new card (with a new number and exp) rendering the old one useless.

It used to be a huge pain, because after that I would have to update all my stored payments and autopays.

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