Do You Have To Use Credit Cards To Build Credit

Do you have to use credit cards to build credit? The answer is absolutely yes, but I'm going to give you the formula in the exact structure on how to do it properly, so you get that credit score back up. So there's three things I want to talk about. Number one, I'm going to talk about the one thing everyone does wrong, and I'm going to correct it. It's going to take that fast to correct, but you have to listen to me. Number two, why do people even use credit cards? Got huge answers for that. And number three, how do you use credit cards? And yes, you have to use credit cards to rebuild your credit. You've got to be in the financial system. So let's begin. So first of all, what is the one thing everyone does wrong? Well, they don't understand debt, right? So let's just call it what it is. Credit cards to most people is bad debt. I see credit cards as an investment vehicle, as good debt, and something to leverage for amazing results. In fact, I am so serious about it. Like when I teach student athletes, just soon to be pro athletes, I don't want you using your debit card. Put your debit card away. The debit card takes money straight out of your bank account. If you had any fraud or any charges or anything on it, who's going to fight for you? The money's already gone. It went out of your bank account. There's no recourse. You use a credit card, and you have some issue about payments. You call the credit card company, they send you out a new credit card, and they actually fight the transaction for you. So I'm a huge fan. There is some, I'm going to call it even liability protections, probably a little bit of a stretch to call it that. Huge fan of credit card use. It builds your credit and helps you do it right. So you have to understand good credit card use. And again, I've done so many recordings on this. I want you to go to my search bar and just anything credit card related. I have an entire, in fact, I'll promise we'll put a playlist together. So I'll tell my team. We'll do a credit card playlist and how to use them, how to use them right. I have clients that literally pay everything, including their mortgage on a credit card. Why? It goes a little bit into topic number two about why people use credit cards for points. If you get the right systems, the right reward points, you can get six X, you can get 10X, you can win trips, you can get hotels. There are so many benefits to credit cards. I literally have clients, they pay everything. They pay their utilities, their mortgage, their phone, their tuition. If their kid has tuition, I mean, everything's paid, their car payment, everything's paid on a credit card. Now that gets really risky for those of you who make money, and then you don't feel like you have any bills. Because what's going to happen is you're going to have one, two, or three, depending on the credit cards you use. You really need effectively being used anywhere between five to seven credit cards effectively. So you can put them in different categories. Maybe one is used for all your kind of home expenses. Maybe that's a personal card. Then you have a corporate card. Maybe that writes off your phone and your vehicle. You have another one for gas, another one for food. So systematically organize your cards and what bills it's going to pay. Here's the trick, right? Here's the risk, is you spend all the money that goes into your bank account when you have a job, and then you don't allocate enough money to pay these bills. Now I want this to become a weekly habit, weekly. If you get paid twice a month, I don't care. I want you to pay bills once a week. So I want you to pay, if you say have four credit cards, you're going to pay credit card one off totally. That is the, that's the benefit of it. You have no increased interest. You stay at 0%. You could stay at 0% your whole life if you pay them off on time. But what happens is you make money, you buy a bunch of stuff and you're not using your card. So again, put your debit cards away. Don't use cash. Have cash for emergencies, you know, tucked away somewhere. And plus it's just a good psychological, abundant money thinking thing. But I want you to use credit cards. I want you to pay off credit card number one, start using it again. Week two, pay off credit card number two, start using it again. Week three, pay off three, week four. So you're just cycling, paying all your bills personally and corporately. And again, if you don't understand corporate life, go up to my search bar and look at how do you live corporate life and get a system for your money management and your credit card use. Why do people use them? There are people who live their entire business trips. I take my team using my points, my airline points, my hotel points. I travel on them. Our family uses them. You can use them actually buy stuff. You can buy recorders, you can buy golf clubs, depending on how your reward system works. Huge value for bonus points, but you need to be in the financial system. Some of you are like, I have to be off the grid. Well good luck with that. That's going to be really hard being really rich, being off the grid. The way you get rich is you use the financial system. Is it perfect? No, but it's the way that it is. So legally use everything that you can. So again, why do people use them? They want points and rewards and it actually can systemize and make your life fairly easy. When it comes down to tax time, you give your account and all your bank statements, all your credit card statements, and away you go with the right deductions. So before I talk about how to use credit cards to actually build better credit and why most people have bad credit in the beginning, I want you to subscribe to my channel. Go down there, click the notification button, get a notification every day. Actually watch it. I need your watch hours. You need the education about business or money every day. If there's not a topic out here that you like or want, head down to the bottom, put in a comment section. Before you put that in, make sure you look at my search bar. I've got thousands and thousands of hours out here, tons of content. If you want to just ask me a question, run over to asklaurel.com, ask a question, make a request. And if you say, I just want to talk to somebody on your team. How do I hire a mentor? How do I work with your company? Just jump in there, put it in Ask Laurel and we'll have somebody call you right away. Now, how do you use credit cards to rebuild credit? I want to back up and answer a more important question. Why do you need to get bad credit? And I can tell you a lot of you, it's 18 years old. You don't even know how to fill out your credit card application and your parents aren't helping. And honestly, a lot of them don't even know how to do it right. There's a very systematic way to fill out the credit card application. And when you apply, you apply for four to six all at one time. So you have a hard credit pull all at the same time. If you do one this week and then one next month and one next month, you've got hard pulls scattered out and it's reducing your credit. I've seen people literally drop 60 to 80 points by not doing their credit application right. So I actually have a video, I'm going to put it in the link below and it's actually pulls up a screen and shows you how to apply properly at 18 years old. So parents get it, teenagers get it. So the first day when you're 18 years old, you should be applying for a credit card. I want you to click on the link. I want you to get the video. How do you use credit to rebuild your credit? Well, first of all, again, that application is critical. And again, you want to apply four to six all at one time. And then once you do that, wait six months, say you only get two, right? You only get a little bit. Six months later, I want you to apply again for another bundle. And I want you to call the card companies that you got back and say, I'm doing some business strategy. I'm doing business growth. I need an expanded limit. So if you only got, say 2,500, say I'm doing a business investment. I need 10,000 and I want it to be back at 0%. I'm planning to pay them off every month and then just start your cycle again. So you start paying them off. You have to use your cards though. I don't know how many people your credit stays low because you actually have six cards, but you're using two. You have to do a little bit of utilization. Maybe you put some food on one, maybe put gas on one. Maybe you eat out with one. Maybe you give one to your teenager and have them be very accountable. But that also is a way for them to have, I think it's a safety measure to have them out if they want to, you know, they forget their lunch. They want to grab lunch. They're out with a friend. They just need access to some cash in this day and age from a safety measure. So use all of them, pay them off and get in that pattern. You say, well, what if I can't do that? Well, they call our office. So maybe you get a personal loan, you pay it off. There's a whole system will help you pay off what you have appropriately. Now on page 194 of my Millionaire Maker book. So that means you got to go get it. Page 194, I give you a debt calculator process of how to pay off credit cards, Millionaire Maker style, because what I am not going to agree with, say you have $30,000 of credit cards, you are not going to spend $30,000 to go pay them all off. You're going to go get some cheap money, pay them off while you make money and get the $30,000 you have invested. See a lot of you are losing the pattern. You're so worried about your debt, you forget to invest and you lose the compounding power of money. So if you have a bundle of money, invest it. Go get some cheap money to pay off your bad debt, whatever you did to yourself to hit a reset button. I have a whole formula. This is just an overview in my opinions. Call our office. Let us help you do this properly. Get into one of our coaching programs. We can get it fixed. It's going to take a minute. You do need to get in the system and use it right to get your credit score back up. And eventually, yes, I want you to get an auto loan. Like a simple, you can go get a used car, but get, don't pay for it all up front. Get a little tiny auto loan. For those of you have bad credit, you start making appropriate timely payments. You'll build that credit back up into the 700s. And if you're really, really good, you'll get into the 800s. So just to wrap up again, I want you in a wealth cycle where you're making money, investing money, making money, investing money, using good debt properly. I need to move you out of the lifestyle cycle. That's why a lot of you are broke. It's not working. You make, spend, make, spend, you spend most of your time worried about the debt and paying off debt. Then you call me and say, I want to start when I'm debt free. No, we're going to start today. While you have debt, we'll repurpose it while we get you on a growth track. So very different structure, different than what you know, but it's not difficult. You can all do it. I'll talk to you tomorrow.