Biggest Money Mistake - Credit Cards
Millionaire Money Habits has just started up a new contest on his blog called “What’s your biggest money mistake?” and y’all probably know where I am going with this one … CREDIT CARDS! I know I am in good company with this hideous money misstep. Credit card companies are expert marketers and have managed to snare so many people …
I’ve blogged about this before, for those of y’all who were reading back at the beginning of the year for my great credit card debate. For me, the big money mistake started when I was a naive 18 year old college freshman with only a minimum wage part time job at Taco (H)Bell on the weekends. Citibank, that notorious campus predator, snared me young. With a 21% interest rate, I ended up working more than just the weekends, since I had very poor money handlng skills … well let’s be honest, I was simply clueless and easy prey. And it only took one missed payment for my interest rate to get jacked up to 29.9%.
You might think I learned my lesson with my Citibank experience, but I had dug in and fortified my position in the Land of Stupid by getting another credit card, and with this second one “only” having an 18% interest rate I actually thought it was a “good deal.” Of course, that was the credit card that my ex and I used to buy a horse (no, I am not kidding!) and of course we didn’t read the fine print that said cash advances on the credit card had a 26% interest rate.
Let’s not forget the Bealls card for my 19th birthday, the JC Penney card, and of course the Sears card that I never had the opportunity to use since it always had tires or tools charged to it. Those store credit cards all start at 21% interest, and it just gets uglier from there if you miss a payment, which we did due to disorganization and inattention (and not having a budget!).
The ironic thing about all this is my grades and IQ tests all claim I am highly intelligent. When it came to money, I was completely uneducated and DUMB DUMB DUMB! I was lost in the Land of Stupid and making just about every money mistake in the book. I didn’t like what was happening with the credit cards, but I had no idea how to fix it. I finally stopped using those insidious little pieces of plastic, but the bills lingered for another EIGHT YEARS because I was still quite ignorant about how to handle money.
Once the old credit card bills were paid off, I still wandered through life clueless about how to suceed with money. I didn’t get any new credit cards, but six years later I did something TRULY STUPID: I urged hubby to get a couple credit cards to “build his credit score.” I wince just typing that. I didn’t want the things myself, but thought it was a good idea for hubby … I’m sure I could write a whole ‘nother post on that alone. But, that was how we got back into credit card debt hell. It was my idea (and yes I am ashamed of myself, even though I hadn’t found a better way by that time).
Then about ten months into doing another stupid money mistake, I found out about Dave Ramsey. THIS was what I had been looking for! This was what I had been needing for fifteen years as I wandered through life making money mistake after dumb money mistake. I got busy, got myself on a budget, and paid the three credit cards we had off in pretty good time.
I’m never going back into that particular Land of Stupid. I am never again paying stupid tax in the form of credit card interest or fees. And just in case anyone hasn’t figured it out yet, I will use this blog to try to prevent others from making the colossal money mistake of using credit cards!
