@BronzeTrader wrote:
What amazes me is that "Maiden" has been here since 2011 and has had >2,000 posts. This means she knew all kinds of stuff discussed here and she was hevily involved or addicted. I do not blame her.
We have to really take a grain of salt with all the posts here. We are all different. Some of the people here are multi millenaire. Some of the posts are fake with youngster climing making $600,000/ year. Very often, folks here exaggerate they CL and number of CCs. I do not trust all of them.
Credit cards are traps for a lot of people. Credit is cheap and it does not take much efforts to receive a $20k CL. But we also need discipline in managing them. Having a $400,000 total CL does not really anything to me. Often time we need to ask for CLD (decrease) to have a CL we are comfortable.
When I manage minor's credit card, I keep the minor's CL at $1,000. No point to ask for a CLI. The utilization rate may be high. But at least the credit is more manageable.
Very true. We must take most, if not, all posts with a grain of salt. When I first came to this forum, I only had one card at the time. A Capital One MTV Visa card with a $750 dollar limit. I'd had that card for well over a year and once I got to this forum, I learned how to converted into a QuickSilver, get a CLI to 5k, and obtain visa signature status at that. That being said, this forum is great for teaching people how to go about improving their credit profile. But it can also be a trap for others who simply do not know or realize that having a CL larger than their yearly income is not something one should be bragging about. If you only make 40k a year, you should not have CLs in excess of 40k.
I personally know that I asked for unnecessary CLIs that I knew I would not use but it was nice to know I had there. Since incurring my debt from simply running out of savings and extended unemployment, I have lost most of those CLs anyway. Citi was the most significant loss I took with my CL and thus made my FICO drop from my UTL going up. I had a CL with them of nearly 10k. Soon after I started to carry a balance (around 7k I believe), they CLDd me each time I made a payment and eventually raised my minimum payment to nearly $200 from like $90 bucks.
I put this post out as a cautionary tale because I probably could have avoided a lot of this debt had I made wiser money decisions and maybe spent less and lived on the bare minimum while unemployed. Just because you have a 6k CL does not mean you should spend 6k unless you have the means to pay it back right away. But life happens so you gotta pick up and keep going. I definitely appreciate all the awesome advice that has been shared so far and I will be keeping you guys updated on my progress with this debt as I work to pay it down. Everything is not all gravy with credit cards. They may be nice and helpful now, but once you find yourself with your head barely above water, they don't even know you and often times will turn you away. I cannot even tell you how many times I was referred to a bankruptcy lawyer by the CCs and I was in more debt then compared to what my balances are now. It is my hope to purchase a home in the next 3 or 4 years and that dream would be nullified by several charge offs and bankruptcy filing.
As of 2017, rebuilding...
