This seems to be a controversial topic. We all have our opinions. Feel free to share yours, nicely.
Michael and I hopped on the Dave Ramsey wagon when we first got married. We happily paid off our debt in a few years. What a relief! We were so thankful to not be tied to anything financially when we decided to come here.
However, in the back of my business-minded hubby's brain, he knew having no credit cards, never owning a house, etc., could bite us sometime down the road.
And now it has. Not too badly, but it has. We, after many days of thinking and researching, decided to go against good ol' Dave and apply for a credit card. The whole reason: to earn frequent-flier miles. As of now, we fly approximately 17,000 miles per person every year. We thought, why not earn extra miles with this handy little card?
We applied. They denied. Their reasoning: we don't have the right credit history!!
This strikes me as extremely annoying. Basically what they're saying is, in order to obtain their card, they would rather see us with several other cards and debts than with no debt at all. I guess that's where the evil part comes in--they want to see that we'll rack up a huge amount and have a hard time paying it off so they'll earn more in interest.
Ugh. I don't even want to think about if we ever want to buy a house or anything big. We'll never get the chance because of our good er...bad? credit history!!!
Disclaimer: I'm not against you if you have credit cards! Obviously they're a benefit if used wisely.
In other news, I have already started having Braxton Hicks contractions. Isn't this a bit early for my uterus to be toning itself? With Josiah, I had them the last 2 months or so. This makes me even more anxious to find out the doc's guess of a due date!
we got denied a gas rebate cc. They actually sent us a letter saying that adding us as wasn't finacially smart for them (since we pay ours off every month). ha ha. my bro and his wife are in the same situation and trying to figure out how to someday get a house.
ReplyDeleteThat's such a catch-22! If Matt's parents hadn't put his name on one of their cards when he was in high school (he got to use it for gas, etc.), we would be up a creek, too! I didn't even have a checking account til college, and when I applied for a credit card to start building my won credit after Matt & I got married, I was only able to get one because he had excellent credit already, thanks to his parents. I wish I had advice for what to do at this point, though :(
ReplyDeleteMy first card was a "secured card". I had to send them a check for $300 as a deposit, then they sent me a credit with a $300 limit. After a couple of years, my credit was good enough to buy a house.
ReplyDeleteNo frequent flyer miles on the secured cards though.
Hope the Felder family is doing great!