My story to put it simply was I got a credit card when I was 18 to build credit. My plan was to charge something on it, then use online banking to make a payment…immediately.
This way I was not using credit, I was essentially using my bank card. This went well for a while; truth be told I was giving about 15-20 small online payments a month to the credit card (I was making sure I was not going into debt).
Then at some point I became less diligent and only sent 1 or 2 payments a month (paying off the whole balance though). Then one month I realized I had spent a ton on the card and if I paid it all off I would have very little money in my bank account.
I made the decision…I will just pay most of it, but will leave some balance on the card. From then on I was racking up credit card debt like you wouldn’t believe.
Once I was in knee deep in order to avoid finance charges I would open up a new credit card that had an introductory 0% interest. Then transfer the balance from the old credit card over to it. Then once the 0% interest period was over I would do the same thing with another credit card. (no, it did not work as well as planned)
I thought I was smart. But looking back at it, all I was really doing was re-arranging chairs on the titanic, it was still going down…
