The Internet is packed full of personal finance article choices. They’re everywhere! Unfortunately, most of these articles are offering advice that won’t help your financial situation, or might even make it worse. Just because the advice is free doesn’t mean it’s worth taking.
"Before borrowing money from a friend,
decide which you need most.”
- American Proverb |
One kind of personal finance article that’s particularly useless is the kind that tells you how to get better interest rates on your credit cards. All sorts of tips, tricks, and techniques are offered that do nothing to help convince you that DEBT IS BAD. In fact, many of them would actually succeed in getting you a better rate on your credit card. But they’re missing the point! You don’t want to be focusing your efforts on getting better credit card deals; you want to be focusing on getting rid of the cards altogether! Devoting so much time and energy to getting good interest rates on credit cards is like taking painkillers to help you deal with the knife in your back. Sure, it might reduce the pain - but it won’t address the REAL problem, which is that you’ve got a knife in your back! Any personal finance article that’s focused on dealing with credit card companies is not going to help you in the long run. They’re headed in the wrong direction. They send the message that using credit cards is inevitable and necessary, and that’s not the case. Your plan should be to get out of the clutches of those companies altogether. Is it possible to live without credit cards at all? Yes! And millions of people do it! How? By living frugally, managing their money wisely, and exercising self-discipline by not buying things they can’t afford. Most personal finance article writers don’t want to press this point because readers don’t want to hear it. So how do you break free from the credit card cycle? Make a list of all your credit card debts, from smallest to largest. Then, while making only the minimum payments on the others, pay everything you can on that smallest debt, every month until it’s paid off. Attack it aggressively. Once that’s done, take your usual monthly payment on that debt and start applying it toward the next debt, and so on. Don’t forget to close the accounts as soon as they’re paid off, too. Let the credit card companies know that you have no intention of continuing to do business with them. Credit cards cost too much to be worth the convenience they provide. Any personal finance article that overlooks that crucial fact is not going to help you in the long run.
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"No man's credit is as good as his money."
- Edgar Watson Howe |
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Debt is NOT your friend. It's not a wonderful "tool" for building wealth. That's a myth.
