Be Disciplined with your First Card

That moment you receive your very first credit card in the mail is an exciting experience. It isn’t just because you know that you have the freedom to spend money that you don’t have in hand, although that’s a tempting thing to do which can feel quite adventurous indeed. It’s more the fact that getting your first credit card is a rite of passage into adulthood in America. What is important to realize is that this comes along with the responsibility of being an adult. To save yourself from a whole world of trouble, you should take that responsiblity seriously and make sure that you are disciplined in your use of that first credit card.  The most obvious reason that you’re going to want to be disciplined with your first credit card is because you can easily rack up debt that you can’t afford if you’re not careful.

The first credit card will probably come with a low credit limit but it may still be higher than the amount of money that you have available to pay it off. Add to that the fact that it will come with an interest rate that can cause your monthly payments to be really high and you could quickly find yourself facing a debt problem. And nobody wants a debt problem. It creates stress for you on a regular basis as you struggle to figure out how to pay it off.

But the debt itself isn’t the only reason that you should be disciplined in using your first credit card. It’s also because of the fact that you’ve now been entrusted to show that you can be a good borrower. Your failure to do so is going to make it a whole lot harder to get other credit cards or loans down the line. And it can also impact your ability to do other things that require a credit check, such as get approval to move in to your first apartment. You don’t want to live with Mom and Dad forever and you’re probably going to want a better credit card down the line so you want to make sure you establish good credit history from the time that you start using that first credit card.

Being disciplined with your first credit card means that you’re going to have to stick within a personal spending plan and you’re going to have to maintain at least a part time job in order to be able to pay your bills. This is going to require organization, will power and focus on your priorities. These aren’t things that are easy to come by when you are young but they are good skills to develop before too much time passes. These are things that you’re going to have to learn to do as an adult anyway. The credit card is the first sign that you’re really an adult so you should consider it a time to begin being responsible with your money. Sure, it sounds boring, but you’ll be really glad that you did it in the long run.

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• Don’t Start Living Off Your Credit Cards - Adjusting to the rising costs of living is not easy for anyone. Just meeting a person’s basic needs can be a struggle...
• Hiding Credit Card Problems From Your Parents is a Big Deal - One of the first things that you are probably going to want to do when you become an adult and start to...
• Sign or Not Sign the Back of Your Card? - Have you caught wind of the great signature debate when it comes to credit cards?  Doing a search online, you’ll find many...

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.