Cardratings.com Wants to Hear Your Story
Published on - October 24th, 2011 (Modified on - November 3rd, 2011) (by April Dykman) Every week we feature a “reader story” at Get Rich Slowly. Some stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success — or failure. These stories feature people from all levels of financial maturity and with all sorts of incomes.
Our friends at credit card comparison website CardRatings.com are also looking for some reader stories, and they’ve asked if GRS readers would like to be featured on their site. Currently they are looking for people who can talk about one of the following two topics:
- How I raised or ruined my credit score by 100 points
- How I got out of massive credit card debt
If you have experience with either topic and you’d like to tell your story, e-mail Ellen at ecannon@cardratings.com.
GRS is committed to helping our readers save and achieve your financial goals.Savings interest rates may be low, but that’s all the more reason to shop for the best rate.Find the highest savings interest rate from Ally Bank, Capital One 360, Everbank, and more.
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I’d be curious to hear some of these stories, but I notice the media never wants to hear from those of us who managed to avoid credit card debt altogether.
I guess our stories aren’t sexy enough
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A penny of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It’s not sexy but it’s true.
Digging my way out of a hugely, mind- and soul-crushing debt load was WAY harder than living within my means is now, but it’s still a struggle (although my credit score and history are gorgeous, I could always pay, it just got out of hand). When digging out, I read up on every tip I cold get my paws on (and got extra jobs too). I hang out here and at the YNAB boards much like some people use 12-step plans.
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Good for you
I do think people should share their stories, don’t get me wrong. “Redemptive narratives” are always more interesting than people who never went astray.
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Agreed. My story would be super short. It goes something like this:
“I don’t buy things I don’t have money to pay for on the spot. Well, I guess I do use a credit card, but I pay it off in full each month. And when I want something that I don’t have the money for, I either put aside a little at a time, or I go get a second job. Or I sell some stuff on ebay/amazon. Or I babysit a lot.”
It’s pretty boring, truth be told, but it does work. I tried to tell this once to an athletic trainer who worked at my PT’s office. He was bemoaning his lack of money and telling me how he couldn’t afford to travel (especially in response to hearing some places I have been). I think this guy makes more in a year than I made in 4, so I was pretty shocked. But when I explained the above, he just shook his head and said “I don’t get it. That wouldn’t work.”
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@Leah — that pretty much sums up my story too
I do without things or wait until I can save up for something I want.
Sometimes I find it hard to get people to understand that though. I’m amazed at how many people treat consumer debt as normal and inevitable, and how often I hear that I’m “too young to worry so much about retirement” (I’m in my early thirties!) and that I “should spend more on yourself.” People don’t want to hear that you can’t have everything you want, whenever you want. (Well, you can, but I think we all know the consequences!)
Apparently it’s okay to make financial sacrifices to get yourself out of trouble, but not okay to make compromises to stay out of trouble.
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Dropping my credit score by 80 points was easy. All I had to do was try 3 times in 4 months to refinance my farm. Never mind that all the failures were due to things other than my creditworthiness*, 3 hard pulls for refi in 4 months apparently equals “bad credit risk”.
Didn’t quite drop by 100 or I’d email them.
*failure 1: incompetent bank resulting in me deciding to take my business elsewhere mid-process
failure 2: incompetent appraiser who freaked out when he saw my team name emblazoned on my trailer and declared us a “commercial property” despite zoning that prohibits commercial business here.
failure 3: loss of property value dropping below threshold for refi. Thanks for nothing, housing bubble!
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I’d like to hear some stories about people who switched credit cards because of unfair practices – like I did.
When my credit card company raised my interest rate to 35% with no reason given (I pay in full every month), I spent a couple of very frustrating hours on the phone trying to get an answer.
After being told that I probably did something to lower my credit rating and a series of other “explanations” that didn’t make sense, I responded to one of these nonsensical explanations (that I had too much credit available) and asked to lower my credit limit as I had no need of the high limit that they had kept raising. I was immediately transferred to someone who told me that no they had just raised everyone’s interest rate across the board but because I was such a good customer they would lower mine to 9%.
I began looking for a new bank but didn’t bother to tell them why I was switching. The difficulty I had talking to anyone with a reasonable explanation told me that they didn’t really care if I was happy doing business with them.
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If you pay your credit card in full every month, then why do you care what your interest rate is? You’re not going to pay any interest when you pay in full each month.
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If you pay in full every month, why do you worry about interest rate? I know that’s something pretty far off my radar screen. I worry a lot more about ease of use, rewards, etc.
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I don’t – except that I was concerned that there was some error in my credit rating that caused the jump. When I got the run around trying to find out why and then finally learned that it was totally arbitrary, I decided I wanted to work with a company that would talk to me, not jack up my interest rate in the hope that I get into financial difficulties and end up getting fleeced. It was more the principle of the thing.
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