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Every time you swipe your credit card at the register, you find yourself closing your eyes and praying that the purchase will go through. If you’re tired of living on the edge, you should read about the bad habits that will make you max out your credit card.
Getting Better at Using Your Credit Card:
It will be hard to break bad habits on your own. If you want to be sure that you’re unlearning irresponsible habits and improving your credit, you should see a professional for help. Click here to learn about debt management and credit counselling at Davidsklar.com and to see how you can benefit from their services. Going through credit counselling with a licensed insolvency trustee could push you to transform your budget, your savings and even your credit score. A few clicks of your mouse could help you change your life.
If you still think you can do it on your own, try to break these habits that will make you max out your credit card.
1. Using Credit for Everything
Putting everything on your credit card is a risky habit. Every transaction adds to the debt pile, and over time, interest makes that grow. Putting small purchases like groceries on the card every week will only make it harder to pay down the balance in the future.
It’s also easy to lose track of your spending with plastic. If you don’t keep a close eye on your account, you could go overboard.
To keep yourself from spending blindly, use cash more often. There’s no interest with cash. There are no penalties or late fees. And using cash comes with an interesting perk: researchers have found that paying with cash is more painful because the experience is more tangible than swiping a card. So, you’re less likely to spend beyond your means. You’ll keep your wallet full and your credit balance down.
2. Sticking to the Minimum
Sticking to the minimum payment every single month is a good way to get yourself into financial trouble fast. It doesn’t bring down your balance by very much. It doesn’t stop interest from making your debt grow. It only stops you from getting charged a late fee.
Try your hardest to pay off everything you owe. If you don’t have enough, tackle as much of the bill as you can. Almost anything is better than doing the bare minimum.
3. Not Watching Your Automatic Payments
Using automatic bill payments is a clever way to avoid late penalties and fees, especially when you have a hard time keeping track of all those deadlines. But there are serious consequences if you don’t leave enough room on your card for these payments. They could run up your balance — or worse, max out your card. If those payments can’t go through because of this mistake, you will still deal with late penalties and fees. You can’t just set it up and forget about it.
It’s easy to tumble into credit card debt and struggle to get out of it. By breaking your bad credit habits and signing up for counselling, you can avoid this all-too-common problem entirely.