Do you cringe when the phone rings? Do you not like to open your mail because you're afraid of what you may see? Does the though of your ever-decreasing bank account make you want to vomit? Well, you're probably struggling to get out of debt like millions of other Americans are right at this very moment, and not too long ago, I was one of them.
When I got my first credit card, I had my mother's words in the back of my head saying "Never put more on your credit card than you can pay off in one month." Sure, I thought, no problem. But having that card with a 1500 dollar limit in my wallet was way more temptation than I can handle (who gives a seventeen year old that much money anyway!). At first I was good, I didn't really use it that often and I paid it off as soon as I could...then things changed. I was traveling a lot to visit family and got a frequent-flier card and the smart 18-year old I was, put all of my tuition onto that card for the semester. Bad move! It took me almost a full year to pay off something that I could have paid cash for. After that I kept applying for more and more cards and credit companies kept giving me more and more cards.
Things were ok until I moved out of my parents' house. I seemed to be missing due-dates, a lot of them. Collection calls started and I kept ignoring them. I don't know why exactly, I worked and could definitely make the minimum 15 dollar payment, I just didn't for some reason. Being on my own made me nervous with my money. What if I couldn't pay rent? What if I couldn't pay for food? I surely wasn't going to give up my weekly going out money, going to bars and club was what I did for fun and dropping a 200 dollar bar tab in 1 week didn't seem too extravagant for me at the time. So, I kept ignoring the bills, ignoring the calls and before I knew it...POW...I was going to collections and my credit score was 546 (a.k.a. really bad).
I'm writing this blog to help out all of the other young girls and boys that are just discovering credit and debt and show them how to keep their credit good or fix the bad credit they've made. I'm 23 years old and for the first time in 3 years I'm seeing the light. I know that doesn't sound like a very long time, but I finally pulled myself up by the bootstraps and took my problem head-on. I'm not out of debt, not by a long shot, but I have control over it now and I'm getting closer and closer each month to raising my credit score and get debt off my back.
In the entries to follow I will go over how to assess what damage there really is and how to take care of it the right way.
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