Setting up a business can be a lot of fun until the point where you start to run out of money. When that happens, things can go wrong quickly, and you stop being able to pay people.

To skirt around this issue and put it off for a little longer, a lot of women in business use credit cards to plug the financial gap. It seems so simple, especially if they have one already.

However, using credit cards for short-term business expenses and cash flow isn’t usually a good idea. Here’s why:

5 reasons fempreneurs should avoid using credit cards for business:

1. High interest rates destroy cash flow in the future

Usually, lenders won’t provide you with money for nothing. Instead, they’ll want something in exchange for offering the money upfront. That’s the interest rate.

Unfortunately, when the interest rate is high, it sucks money from the business in the future, making it more challenging to recover your financial position. When this happens, balances that you need to carry over keep growing, you can’t pay them off, and your debts begin to accelerate, which isn’t what you want.

2. Risk of personal liability

There’s also a risk of personal liability when you use credit cards for business. Even if you have a limited company, you could become personally liable for the debt, putting your real assets, like your home, on the line.

The best way to avoid this is to use a business credit card that is attached to your company formation and bank account. Usually, this separate account is something that you can write off as a loss if your business fails, with liquidators coming in to see what they can salvage.

3. Temptation to overspend

Owning a credit card and using it for business also, ironically, increases the temptation to spend. A lot of people view their credit cards for businesses as tools to drum up more revenue during slow periods, but they can easily become a crutch, even when a business isn’t working.

A lot of people get into financial trouble because they overestimate how much money they will be able to make in the future, according to Alex Kleyner, the CEO of National Debt Relief. And that’s a big problem. As debts mount, the amount of interest also increases in real terms until the point where it essentially becomes completely unsustainable.

4. Hidden fees quickly add up

Then, of course, there are the hidden fees on a lot of credit cards. Many banks will charge extra for things like late payments or using the cards abroad. These might not seem particularly large at the start, but they can grow significantly over time to the point where it is hard to justify the expense.

5. Damage to your credit score

Lastly, it’s a good idea for female entrepreneurs to avoid using credit cards for business because of the harm it can do to credit scores. If you want to borrow money in the future to scale your business, it will be harder if none of the credit bureaus or lenders trust that you’re good for the money.