Author: Justin Shipley

Credit Cards and Debit Cards are a great way to establish, fix, or build credit. But there are some key points that many people miss and end up messing up their credit. We will give you simple steps on how to use your credit card the right way in order to improve your credit.

*Don’t keep applying for credit cards right after you get declined. Each time a company runs your credit it’s put on your credit report. A lot of credit cards won’t accept you if they see you have applied to other cards recently.

*Always pay your minimum balance no matter what. Even though your minimum balance might not take much off of your total balance you should pay it each month if you can’t pay more. Believe it or not as long as you pay your minimum balance you will never be sent to collections.

*A lot of people have bad credit and they always say “I can’t even get a credit card to improve my credit”. This is completely wrong, you can get a secured card, which works just like a debit card with a few differences. The reason it is “secured” is because you have to make a deposit on the card in order to use it. Make a $100 deposit and you will have a credit limit of $100. The good part about doing this is that they report to credit bureaus. This means that you can make your everyday payments on your new secured card, and at the end of the month they will tell the credit bureaus that you paid your balance in full. Great way to build credit! You can find these cards on our Bad Credit Page.

*Finally don’t have too many credit cards at once. It’s better to have one credit card with a balance of $2000 on it, than to have 4 credit cards with a balance of $400 on each of them. So if you get a chance get one card and use the balance transfer feature to get all your credit card payments on one credit card.