Bad Credit Truth

Save, hard to do or is it?  So many Americans have dealt with this issue.  Rather than put some money away every week, they take the bulk of their weekly or bi-weekly check and spend it on “stuff”.  I would challenge anyone to write down what they spend their money on each week, make sure that you don’t take into account your .  It is almost impossible to remember what you spent your money on, but you realize that you have no money and have nothing to show for it.  This is a brutal wake up call.  I wished that I had learned this at a younger age.  Instead, I started to learn this in my twenty’s.  I have had a job since I was fifteen.  Now, do you think that I have a single penny from when I was a teen, Nope!  This aggravates me when I think about it.

Now, I have figured out a plan that works for me at this point in my life.  This may or may not work for you.  What I do is I take and add up my bills and then I divide by 4.3 ( this is about how many weeks are in a month).  I take that number and compare it to my weekly earnings.  Now I take a number that I am comfortable with putting in savings and add 15 percent to it.  When I first started to do this, I felt that I had absolutely no money, that was just the opposite.  I had money, but I just wasn’t spending it.  As time went on, I was able to live with on the little “pocket money” that I had.  You would be amazed how you can stretch your money.  Every once and a while, I would take a peak at the account online and see what the balance was and I would have a little party in my head.  It feels good to save money!  There is no way around it!

One way that you save money if you have a hard time disciplining your self is to have direct deposit.  What I do is I take that amount that I have allotted  to save and have that money be deducted from my pay check and automatically deposited into a savings account.  I don’t even see that money at all.  You know the old saying, “Outta sight, Outta mind!”  That is exactly what happens.

Not everything that I said is going to directly mold to your specific life, but these are basic principles that I have lived by and have treated me well.  Just remember folks, when it comes to saving, discipline is the main key.  This fundamental key of discipline will carry on with you.  It will create good habits that will stay with you for life.  It will most certainly give you a solid advantage to stray clear from getting into bad credit. Always keep your eye on the prize.  Once you see the fruits of your labor, you will most certainly satisfied.

Imagine you are driving buy a big car sales superstore, every one has at least one by them.  So you are driving by, and you have this jalopy that you were given when you were sixteen by your grandmother.  You are now 24.  The car is rusting out, there are a few unknown rattles that are coming from under the hood.  The car is blowing so much smoke out from the tailpipe, you can hardly see that eighteen wheeler behind you.  You look to your left and you see this ten by ten dot matrix screen that you can see from the moon displaying, “NO CREDIT, NO PROBLEMS!” or, “Bankruptcy, bad credit, you’re still approved!.

So many people get dragged into this marketing ploy, it’s not even funny.  You start to think, “Yeah, I need that new car, this one is not cutting it anymore!”  What you don’t understand is that, yeah you will be approved, but the interest rate will be so astronomically high, you will not be able to see all of the numbers on graphing calculator.  But, by the time you get to that point, you will start to make excuses for yourself to have this new car.

If you absolutely need that car.  Make sure you do your research first.  Contact the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and check if the dealer has had complaints filed against them.  What a lot of the time, shady car dealers will do, is inflate the cost of the car, and then knock some of the price tag off and then they make it look like you are getting a fantastic deal.  Then they will slap the high interest on the loan.  be careful with this one.  When you finance through a dealer, the dealer gets a cut of the finance.  So if you call the lender your self, you may be able to get a few percentage points off. Bad credit car loans are a bad idea as a whole.

All in all, make sure that you expense all avenues before going with the high interest car loan.  This can even ruin your credit more so than it was before.  One rule to go by, ALWAYS make sure you can afford it before you sign your signature on that line!

In the game of life, there are two basic functions:  Wanting and Needing.  These two phrases can be directly linked to bad credit.  There is a very big gap between the needs of our life and the wants of our lives. We begin to trick ourselves that the wants are really needs.

The key to differentiating these two is to remove the emotion from the situation.  When you want something so very badly, you can become stuck in a rut.  You begin to fantasize about this particular item or thing.  You begin to trick your self into saying that you can no longer live with out this item or thing in your life.  It has become a life and death situation.  When you start to live with this kind of life style, then you start to throw the other important things in your life to the way side.  For example, you start to not pay attention to the due dates on bills, because they do not have a higher priority than the item that you lust so very badly.  This is when your credit starts to take a turn for the worst.

My mother taught me a lot of things, and one key thing that she taught me was, when you want something so badly, you end up getting it.  Then give it a months time or so and you will no longer appreciate it.  I have done this so many times in my life I cannot count.  i will give you a prime example of this.  I used really be into cell phones.  I would rarely have a single cell phone for more than a few months.  I would buy one, then I would get bored of it and then search for a new one with bigger and better features.  Then I would get the best one out there, and the viscous cycle would begin all over again.  So you see that it is one bad financial decision after another that snowball’s and ruins your credit.  If I had just stayed with one particular cell phone, then I would have saved myself a lot of money.  The same principle can go with a lot bigger purchases like buying a car, or home.

What you need to do is stick to your guns when it comes time to “want” something.  Is it really what I want?  Can I really live without this thing?  These questions need to be answered before buying anything.  If you start out with small items, you will learn a good habit for when it comes time to purchase your first big item.