You gotta take care of these little darlings. They can help or hurt you.
I want to follow up on Lee’s last blog about first-time home buyers. He mentions that credit is the most important thing that you can have! He is absolutely right!
I ruined my own when I got my first credit card at 18. I was so dumb! I got the bill in the mail and my minimum payment due was $25.00. I bought the money order, filled it out, put a stamp on it, and just stayed too busy to mail it. That’s stupid. There’s no way to make myself feel better; it was dumb. So when the next bill came in, I just didn’t bother.
Actually, I applied for two more cards, and just let them go too. I had no idea what I was doing in the real world of paying bills, or how I would affect my future self who wanted to buy a house.
What happened was that my credit bottomed out, and I ended up with negative remarks on my credit. Everything was turned over to collections, and I paid them that way. That doesn’t really help. Your credit report still shows that you were turned over to collections.
Sure enough an emergency arose. Had I taken care of business, I would have been able to cover it. Instead, I had to rely on others for help. Enough about me.*