Читать книгу Still Standing - Bucky Sinister - Страница 20

It's hard to live a regular life in this country without a credit card. Many jobs require hotel stays, and you will be asked to leave a card for incidentals, even if you don't plan on using any incidentals. You can't rent a car or a DVD without a credit card. It's likely, however, that you won't be able to get a regular card.

Once you have a bank account, talk to a bank officer about getting a secured credit card. You must leave a deposit, which they will put in an interest-drawing savings account, and the bank will give you a line of credit. I did this with $300. I put my phone bill on an automatic payment through my credit card and then put the credit card payments on automatic payment from my checking account. This is easy enough to do. I never missed a payment.

Within six months, I was getting offers in the mail for other credit cards. Most of them weren't good deals; they came with high interest rates and big annual fees. I ignored those. But my regular payments on my secured card were reporting good news to the credit services.

After a year, the bank gave me back the deposit with interest and my secured card became a regular credit card. Every so often, they raise my limit. It's big enough now to handle all my bills.

The only warning here is that it is our tendency as addicts to max out our credit. We want to get something today and not have to pay for it. There is a consequence to this behavior. I don't rack up more debt than I can pay off at the end of the month. I don't want to pay any interest for the quick satisfaction of having a big screen TV or a nice vacation.