Bad Credit? No Credit? We can help. As long as you give us your first born and pay an interest rate somewhere in the area of 32%. This is usually for car ads. And, quite possibly, loan sharks. However, having bad credit requires some hard self-examination as to what got you there. Wanted a house, check. Wanted a car, check, wanted nice furniture, check. All wants, no needs. Don’t get me wrong here, I am not sitting in judgment. I’ve been down this path a time or three.
I am not very good at making financial plans. The problem is sticking to them. One household appliance breaks and there goes my budget. Might as well buy those boots I’ve been eying. Cutting up the credit cards? Well, this idea has some merit only if you don’t go out and get new ones and believe me you don’t have to have good credit in order to get a credit card. I think the first thing to do, and this has worked for me, is to examine, honestly, the difference between a want and a need. The next thing is to find what you are going to give up. You have to be honest with yourself here. Digging yourself out of the credit trap is a lot like dieting; it’s a long process so be honest with yourself. Giving up everything you enjoy backfires because people generally find this very hard to do for an extended period of time.
When you have bad credit you can usually get credit but at an extremely high rate of interest so forget about that for a while. You have to work on repairing your credit which means the outstanding bills must be paid and hopefully you learn something about the importance of credit in the meantime. Go to credit counseling if you have to. Instead of giving up everything you like find cheaper alternatives. I love to shop. I really love to shop. So I shop on Ebay. I can get everything I want cheap and when I’m done with it I resell it. Of course this is assuming the rent, utilities, food and other essentials are all covered first. No shopping allowed until then. Oh, and the credit card debt must be paid as well. You leave a little to do what you want (assuming you have any left and after a while you will). Remember, bad credit is usually a temporary state. Sometimes its temporary a couple of times, but for some of us it takes a while for the message to sink in. But it does eventually.