Credit cards

Every now and again, someone asks me: "how did you fix your credit?" Not my credit score, which is the primary focus of the site that accompanies this blog, but my credit itself. How did I get things paid?

In my case, I took an envelope, wrote "do not open" on it, put all my credit cards inside, and taped it to the inside of the apartment door. Every day when I left, I saw a visual reminder of my debt. I didn't take them out of the envelope, so I couldn't spend on 'em, either.

As I closed each card, either by eventually paying it off, or by negotiating with debt collectors, I took that card out, and cut it up. Victory! In the process, I very much learned to live on less, and realized that keeping up with the Joneses is a recipe for disaster, unless your last name is Jones.

(And again, as a side note; when negotiating with credit card companies, *always* get them to state, in writing, that once you pay, they'll remove all the negative things they've said about you from your credit reports.)