Many of you probably read my goals for getting out of debt in the next 5 years, but if you didn’t I suggest that you read it first right here. I plan to not have any debt, pay for my first house in cash, and be ready to for any emergency in the next 5-10 years, but most of it is happening in the next 1-2.
While paying off all of my debt, I have learned a lot of things including budgeting, savings, a little investing, as well as how to not rely on credit.
I was a little different growing up though. When I got a paper route, my money went into savings and I got to keep part of it. When I started working at McDonald’s almost 1/2 of every paycheck when to savings and I could use the rest for whatever I wanted. Through college, I used more savings than I put in there some months, but I was never worried because I had enough put away that I didn’t really need to work, plus I had my drill paychecks and GI Bill that helped out tremendously in the first year of college.
Throughout all of my jobs, my parents never encouraged me to get a credit card. I know GASSPP! I have no credit what-so-ever. This tends to be such a terrible thing for people today, but I guess my outlook is that you don’t really need credit if you don’t need a loan. Since I plan to buy my first house in cash, I don’t suspect that credit will really be a problem for me.
Here are the 5 main things that I have learned from not relying on credit: