I just refi-ed my condo - so I know my credit score is 835. I rack up a lot of CC debt then eventually pay it off. I'm their dream customer.

Some good points, but its also sort of a just-so story. Everyone who has gone broke with have their own tale to tell, and they will all be unique in some ways and not so unique in others. If the point is that the haters can just say "look at all these dumb mistakes you made," it doesnt seem that helpful to disqualify stories based on the specific type of dumb mistake he made. His was that he didnt give proper respect to the volatility of his future income. I'm sure plenty, but you correctly point out not the majority, or other people make that specific mistake. Others make other mistakes, like not understanding the volatility of the housing market, not understanding compounding and other basic financial things, over-estimating their future earning potential, underestimating increasing cost of living. There are hundreds of mistakes one can make. Some are dumber than others. I dont really think his mistake is somehow unique though, for any such sob story I'm sure, since you are pretty smart, you could come up with a similar narrative.

Agree with the bolded from what I've heard.

I don't know how much free cash my gf keeps on hand. But she got hit with an IRS audit, a major cat surgery and a multi-$k car repair all in about a 1.5 year span - in addition to a bunch of other minor cat and car issues. So now we can't go on vacation to Italy as planned, or even Mexico. Yay. No option to just put it on the card, no matter how much a trip like that would do for our relationship and quality of life.

The funniest part is she owns her house free and clear and stands to inherit a $M or two in property when her 82-year-old Mom passes. Whereas I'm wondering how far a few $100k in a 401k is going to get me in retirement. But I still have to constantly hear about how poor she feels.

I get it - she's thrifty. It's deeply embedded in her family. I don't fault her for it because I certainly have worse quirks that she puts up with. I'm sure she will wind up light-years ahead of me with finances. But it seems to cause her a lot of stress and has severely curtailed our vacation options.

you could just pay for her vacation with your credit card

Yeah I've thought about it. And I have paid for some smaller vacations like going to Thanksgiving with my family. But I don't really want to pay $2500 for her or have her owe me $2500. The latter seems like a recipe for disaster. I don't think she wants that either.

No, you don't need to maintain balances. Just use your cards normally, pay off every month and they will automatically report balances to rating agencies. Too many people think of credit scores as some kind of system that needs to be gamed. Just be a responsible credit user and you'll automatically build up a high score over time.

Suzzer's girlfriend seems pretty smart imo. Being strict with discretionary spending is how you stay out of trouble in the first place.

Unfortunately, you're just wrong here. You want to maintain a certain level of utilization from month to month. I said keeping them at 0 was worse than keeping a balance, and that's just how it works.


This is the camp I fall into.

What happens if you lose your job?

The downside is you have to pay it back (possibly with interest if it's such a big expense that you can't pay off the CC balance immediately). Money in the bank earns interest (OK not much these days... but in theory).

At any rate I am assuming when you say "I am out of debt now" that you did not always pay your CC bills in full every month? If so you paid exorbitant interest rates while your gf was earning interest on her money until she needed it.

I can't see how having CC debt can ever be less "stressful" than having to deplete a bank account to pay a bill. With one you are paying for something with past earnings. You've already made the money so there is no stress. With the other you are borrowing from your future earnings.

Needs to be? No. Can be? Absolutely.

My brother recently bought a house. His credit score was close to a breakpoint on rates and one of the things the broker told him to do as a result of his credit analyzer report was to take one of his zero balance credit cards, go fill up his gas tank, and then print out a statement the next day showing that it had a balance on it. The printout is sent for a "rapid rescore" to whatever company is in charge of that and it allows the broker to lock in a lower rate based on his new score, even though it isn't officially part of his report yet.

I had the exact same situation in January when I refinanced my personal residence, except the credit analyzer wanted me to pay down one of my cards from $600 to $200. I did that and the next suggestion for a score increase was to pay like $9k against my student loans. It would've been a 15 point increase, but **** that noise, just charge me the extra eighth of a point.

If anyone lives in WI and is looking to buy or refinance, hit me up. My guy is an inexpensive mortgage wizard. Dude absolutely loves his job and will bend as many rules as necessary to hook you up.

^^None of that has anything to do with what I said. You don't need to carry balances month to month to show card usage. I haven't carried a balance statement to statement for years and all the cards I use show a balance on credit reports every month.

Right, the bureau doesn't give a **** about your actual statement closing date, but if you use your credit card a lot (ring up a huge balance and PIF at the end of the cycle) your utilization rate might be too high and end up hurting you.

If you are a heavy user and try to maintain an optimal utilization rate while also avoiding any and all interest charges, that honestly sounds like too much micromanagement for my tastes, depending on your CC limits.

I pay my primary utility bill with one credit card, my Time Warner with another. That's all I use them for. Amazon purchases go through a third card that gives me 5% back or something, and I have a 4th that I use daily for everything else.

The first 3 cards are set up to automatically PIF each month. The two utility credit cards accounts will always report between 1 and 2 times whatever the utility bill is. My Amazon card has a huge limit, so I don't worry about it. The daily use credit card is the only one I actively monitor. If I pay a $2500 bill with it, I'm going to use my phone to make sure that I also make a payment against it.

You're right though. In the long run I could just ignore everything and let the chips fall where they may.

In the end, I use my credit card for everything, but it's more of a safety/convenience thing. I'm not a fan of cash and debit cards are just asking for trouble these days.

I'm a web developer. While my market may dry up someday, if I lost my job tomorrow I could have another one in a week. I don't see much need to hamper my quality of life worrying about very unlikely scenarios in the short term.

Barring that I have confidence I can use my wits to figure something out. Go back to poker, move to Costa Rica and make hats on the beach. I have pretty simple needs. I'd be perfectly happy traveling the West in a beat up truck camping on BLM land.

Personally I believe the end goal of life is not solely to have more money than the other person. No one on their deathbed regrets not working more. Nor is it (for me anyway) to retire as soon as absolutely possible. I realize carrying credit card debt would probably be stressful for someone like you. But for me it's not a problem.

What is stressful for me is not being able to go on vacation with my girlfriend when we have no kids and both make pretty decent salaries. We should be enjoying ourselves more. Nothing recharges my batteries like a real 2-week vacation to somewhere far away. I can coast on that for 6 months.

This is my point - not everyone fits the same mold. I don't necessarily advocate my way for everyone. You need few responsibilities and a career in a red hot field. But I feel like a lot of the Ramsey-ites think there is one and only one correct way to live your life. It's like a religion.

My Dad is basically a starving poet who still pays like $350/month rent and mostly shuns material things. He has worked part-time most of his life and maybe has $20k in savings at age 75. While this isn't the exact path I've chosen, and I've gotten lucky that something I like to do pays really well, I don't think in any way he's lived a failed life because he didn't save up a giant nest egg. It works for him.

Yeah, I'm a heavy user also. Pay everything with either company or personal card. Rack up some decent perks and I have enough total credit to where I don't cross 5% utilization ever.

political point itt

You may be the exception in that you are more responsible than most, but the mindset "life is supposed to be fun" is probably the #1 thing that gets people into the very financial holes that make life not at all fun.

OK, but if you were a normal person with a job that can't be replaced on demand and a mortgage, can you see why you might need some money on hand to pay the bills if something unexpected and bad happens?

you'd be better off just closing the accounts you're not using

Absolutely. I've said as much.

I'd rather not save all my fun until I'm too old to enjoy it. I'm actually starting to feel really claustrophobic right now in this job and no-travel-with-girlfriend situation.

The idea of just quitting the whole thing and dropping out of society for a while, just travel the US and Canada and take pictures, is starting to creep into my head more and more. I feel like having no kids I should have that option if I want it. I have a mortgage but if I rent out my place it will cover a big chunk of it. What is the point of working my ass off just so I can do that in 20 years when I might not even be able to hike up the mountain?

I was a full time poker player for a total of 3 years. I was definitely ready to go back to work, but I miss the freedom. I am not going to quit any time soon though as they just made me an architect with a bunch of new responsibilities which will at the very least look really good on my resume. Sigh for doing the responsible thing. I wonder what 70-year-old suzzer would tell me to do right now.

Btw, as someone who just got engaged, wow, do I have different (possibly hot?) takes on money than I used to have.

For me, a web developer with excellent job security and a fiance who's a nurse who also has excellent job security, the absolute best case scenario is we spend exactly what we make. Not more, not less. Spending more than what we make is obviously bad. But spending less than what we make is bad, too. Because if we have extra money, it will also get spent, and there's like a 95% chance it will get spent for the cause of me doing stuff I don't want to do, anyway. (Fancy vacations (note: do not want), unnecessary new furniture, a new pet, other pointless activities, etc.). Having savings is almost like, a worst-case scenario, given that there's no reasonable scenario where I'm missing meals.

Retirement, you ask? I'm 30. When it's time for me to retire (in 80 years or so), the world will be run by Bernie bros (if we're not all literally underwater by then). I'll gladly let the Dave Ramsay-ites pay for everything.

This seems to be the go-to retirement strategy for a lot of people.