Rae Gets a CC

So in general, I have not been a big fan of credit cards. I ended up doing your typical college sign-up and over-charge and pay a lot of interest. We no longer carry a balance on the one card I've had for 12 years, so I've been happy with just using it for things that you can only use credit cards for.

Recently, I wanted to verify that my single credit card's balance is 0 recently (I've had times where I thought it was 0 but I really owed a couple of cents that kept gaining 29% interest and accruing late fees) and out of curiosity clicked on the free credit report. My credit was lower than I expected. And one of the main reasons was that I don't have enough credit, even if the revolving credit I do have is unused and I have a history of years of on-time payments.


With that thought in mind, and wanting to build my credit a bit if I can, I went looking for answers. According to Reddit, if you have a higher credit limit, even if it's unused, that can contribute toward a higher score. So having another credit card might be good. Okay, cool. I also poked around Mr. Money Mustache... and found the concept of credit card churning.

Now, I was skeptical about whether this would be good for my life. Still am. We also don't travel a lot, though that's more because of the financial blocks than anything else. But I found a credit card that gives a $150 cashback bonus if you spend $500 in the first 3 months, along with general cashback that would be more than the $0.10 per purchase that my debit card gives. My other credit card gives nada for rewards.

I applied and I was approved immediately. I also checked, and Corey could apply as well. So... really, why not?

I still don't like the concept of churning, though. I feel like it might be safer to take it one card and one step at a time, mostly because of our spending habits and a fear of reprisal for "manufactured spending." But if we pick the best reward, get the card, earn the reward, and do it again in 3-5 months or so to keep it from hurting our credit too badly... well, it could be kinda neat. And if a cashback card saves us more money on the purchases we would have made anyway, that's an extra hundred or so per year in our pockets. Maybe we'll even get one of those airline cards and go on more trips or something. It could be good for us.

Oh, I also bought a drying rack, also per MMM's suggestion. More on that later.