Credit
As Teen Daughter begins to spread her wings to fly away she struggles with the typical teen trap - to get a credit card, you must have credit. She complains that everyone - including her employer - has declined her for credit. This actually sounds a little atypical, as she's had phone bills and such in her own name and paid them. But she's never had a car loan. I suppose that is how Southern Man got his first batch of credit cards 'way back in the day. And Teen Daughter has been known to exaggerate from time to time. But she finally got approved for a credit card!
Southern Man is also struggling to rebuild his credit. There was a time when the plastic in his wallet represented open credit well into six figures. Well, the financial ruin of divorce and subsequent poor decisions on his part took care of all that. Southern Man is well on his way out of that mess but as that mess meant negotiating with his credit-card debtors for payoffs it's been about two years since he's had any credit cards at all; the ones with balances got closed and everything else was cancelled. This is a little scary. But a few months ago he got a little Capital One card with a whopping $400 credit line. He's used it for gas and hotels and such when visiting Twelve-Year-Old daughter and just the other day he went online to pay the bill and found that his credit limit was up to $700. And then he got approved for a second card (from Orchard Bank) and when he activated it and went online to create an account he found that it had a $2000 limit!
Now, he's had plenty of offers from "rebuild your credit" outfits where the cards have substantial fees. Southern Man don't do that. These are standard no-annual-fee credit cards where there's no interest if you pay them in full every month. Ditto for Teen Daughter; she held out for proper cards as well. Hers actually has some nicer benefits than mine.
And now Southern Man can breathe a little easier knowing that if there's some sort of unexpected emergency he has something to fall back on. And for some reason he feels richer now than he did back then.
Now, he's had plenty of offers from "rebuild your credit" outfits where the cards have substantial fees. Southern Man don't do that. These are standard no-annual-fee credit cards where there's no interest if you pay them in full every month. Ditto for Teen Daughter; she held out for proper cards as well. Hers actually has some nicer benefits than mine.
And now Southern Man can breathe a little easier knowing that if there's some sort of unexpected emergency he has something to fall back on. And for some reason he feels richer now than he did back then.
posted by Southern Man @ 2:34 PM
8 Comments:
My grammy used to say, "a good name is far better than riches"
I guess your name is all you really have.
Hello There Southern Man!
Do your older kids attend the university you teach at?
They say the south roasted last summer. Will it be that way again or have you all gotten the needed rain?
Do you farm any at all? Any animals or crops in that barn of yours?
Neither of my older two attend where I teach. Kind of crazy, given that one of my benefits is free tuition.
I have no animals, and, sadly, no garden. I hope to lay the groundwork this summer for a good vegetable garden next year.
Adopt me please!
Soooo....what is your barn for?
The top of The Barn is stacked floor to ceiling with boxes. Mostly books. Thousands of books. About half the bottom is occupied by bookshelves. I had to build The Workshop because The Barn is so full of books and bookshelves that I can't get to any of my tools, or use them if I could!
I never would have guessed about the books. You have a "Book Barn".
And one day I will again have a Library.
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