Guest Author - Lili Pintea-Reed
Wne one writes a frugal living column, you get all sorts of weird comments from people. The most common one I get is this:
"I'd be mosre thrifty if it wouldn't ruin my credit rating."
They seem very sincere. They are truly convinced that if they don't keep some high balances on their cards they won't ever be able to borrow large sums for a house, car, or to start a business.
This is simply not true.
We had for many years lived on my husband's salary while I homeschooled our son. I worked part time doing everything from freelance writing, to raising butterflies. This money was outside our budegt and used for savings to buy or repair cars, pay property taxes, or some such things. We had one low limit credit card used for online purchases and real emergencies.
However, at some point my husband decided before he got too old he wanted to start a business and he needed to borrow money. Our frugal lifestyle really paid off. All sorts of banks and loan agancies were very happy to loan us money. We had no problems at all.
We live in area which the typical lifestyle is to maximize all one's credit and run all the cards up to the limit. We had all sorts of friends who thought we "must have bad credit" because we didn't have a cell phone! We simply didn't want one. We had no use for it at the time and didn't want one. People assumed we lived a thrifty life style out of desperate need rather than a descision to lead a simple relatively debt-free life.
This points out one of the main causes for debt -- the need to be socially impressive. We simply did not feel that need, nor did we work in jobs that required a certain "look" or car in order to fit in to the job setting.
So don't be mislead by claims that you need substantial debt to get a loan or a mortgage. You can check your credit rating for free once a year at this government site:
This link below is the free credit report that you are entitled to under Federal law. No Strings. No credit card numbers. To obtain that free report, you must go to:
www.annualcreditreport.com
