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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I was able to get a car loan a few years after the bankruptcy. It was dumb, I hadn’t fully figured out my money situation yet. Bankruptcy didn’t fix that spending habit. But that was the tipping point. When my minimum expenses between the car, student loans, and living expenses exactly equaled my salary, I started trying to beat my way out of the mess. The car I currently own, I paid for up front. By the time I bought a house, the bankruptcy had disappeared off my report. Now the plan is pay off the mortgage and never have a credit score again.


  • fury@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlBankruptcy is lifesaving
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    11 months ago

    I got talked into bankruptcy (by a bankruptcy lawyer, surprise surprise). It cleared $12k of credit cards and bank fees but not the then-$50k of student loans and the spending habits that were the real problem. Now I learned my lesson. No credit cards. Save up and pay. Have an emergency fund that can cover your expenses for months and months in the event you lose your job, or your most expensive unplanned repair. That’s the real life saver.




  • Mastercard and Visa both offer the same zero liability protection on debit cards as credit cards. So both my cards are comparable to credit cards in that regard. If I was at a bank that didn’t have good fraud protection I’d be shopping around.

    I’ve never had a situation where fraud took money out of my account. Someone got my debit card information somehow (I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often). The bank called me, asked if that was me that was in London trying to buy something out of a vending machine, I said nope, they turned off the card and sent me a new one. No money ever left my account, and I wasn’t terribly inconvenienced, other than having to change a few autopay thingies.

    I do get cash back bonus on my PayPal debit card. I appreciate the irony of taking advantage of that in contrast with my original comment. But I presume since PayPal is not a credit card company, they’re paying for it with the merchant fees they collect. I could be wrong.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    All that said to say there’s nothing a credit card can offer me that a debit card can’t, except debt.


  • It’s possible, just tricky sometimes. You can have credit without a credit card, you can rent a home or a car without a credit score, and you can even buy a house without a “good” credit rating, you just need real landlords or real mortgage underwriting that looks at your financial situation as a whole.

    It’s really silly. You could have a million bucks sitting in an account somewhere and your credit report wouldn’t say anything about that, but one look at your bank statements would be enough to tell a landlord or a mortgager you’re good to go.

    I was fortunate enough to be able to sign up for a house payment (in this market! During the zombie apocalypse?!). When the time came for underwriting, they looked at 4 months worth of bank statements since my credit report just had my student loans and a car payment I got rid of in 2017 (in other words, not a “good enough” credit score). It was quite the eye opener of a process, having to explain every deposit to convince them I wasn’t laundering money.

    Once that house is paid off, that’s the last time I’m going to have a credit score. I can get everything else without debt, I just didn’t have a cool $155k to drop on the house at the time. Hotels, car rentals, phone bills, electric bills, everything I’ve tried works fine without a credit check just using EFT or debit cards. Sometimes they charge a deposit, and that’s fine. I budget to account for that.