Ok, here’s a guide for the easiest way to do this.
1. get your first baby credit card with the bank that you already bank with. If it has cashback rewards, even better (that’ll be free money later).
2. set that shit up so it pays the full amount, automatically, every month. you don’t have to remember to go home and pay it off, or worry about it at all. You won’t pay interest.
Your first card, especially if you have no credit, is going to have a small limit. Like $500. This is important: credit companies want you to use a certain percentage of the card every month. This is 1-9%. I usually just go straight 5%. If you use too much, you look like a wild card (even if you pay it off every month) and if you use nothing than you’re not proving to them you can be trusted.
So your first card has a $500 limit. 5% of 500 is $25.
Your goal is to use $25/month.
This is about a tank of gas for me. So once a month, I would fill up with this card, and then put it in the back of my wallet until next month. The payment was made automatically by my bank from one account (debit) to the other (credit). Rinse and repeat. I did this for a year.
Then after a year, my credit had skyrocketed (because I had nothing before, and added this good habit for a year). So I called up my bank and asked for them to increase my limit based on my new credit. I had shown them I was good at borrowing a good amount of money and paying it back on time every time.
The bank increased my limit to $5,500. Like holy shit, at the time I was definitely not expecting that.
So new math. 5% of 5500 is $225. So now instead of gas, I put my cell phone bill ($50), my car insurance ($130), and my dog food automatic order ($40) on it.
The best part is everything is automatic. I keep this card in the back of my wallet permanently; all these bills and the automatic payments are, well, automatic. My credit goes up, I rack up cash back rewards, there’s nothing to it.
And, if I ever get in an emergency, like a vet bill for one of my dogs, I can use that card to pay the $3,000 emergency bill without worrying about whether the place will take my dog if I have no money. I can then go home, change the settings from “pay in full every month” to “pay $X every month” (more than the minimum!) until it’s paid off, and then go back to just my bills. My credit might take a little dip during that time, but will bounce back pretty quickly.
There’s several other factors to credit (hit me up if you want more info) but this was literally the only measure I took for my first year, and my credit went from 525 to 700 in a year. Another year later, I’m now at 753, have a mortgage with a great rate, and can get a monster ass loan if I really need it in case an emergency or hard times fall.
It’s a shitty system of hoops to jump through, but knowing you can use these measures if it comes to it is a good feeling.
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