4 Things To Teach New Credit Card Holders
New credit card customers, especially teenagers who are planning to apply for student credit cards, need to know the basic rules that will keep them financially safe and secure. Some rules are easier than others to follow, but they are all very important.
Increase Credit Card Limits
Some people believe that increasing your credit card limits is too difficult and can only be accomplished by those with at least an upper middle class income. Surprisingly enough, however, raising the limits of your credit cards can be done by anyone, no matter what type of income you have.
High Credit Score
Another important rule includes securing a high credit score. This not only comes from paying off your credit cards, but also from properly upholding every other credit investment that you become involved with: car payments, mortgages, businesses, etc.
Obviously, maintaining good credit and thus increasing your credit score will make it much easier to gain the trust of credit card companies, who, in turn, will feel more secure in raising your credit limit. This may seem like an easy and even apparent rule to remember, but most people are rejected from increased credit limits because they fail to follow this “simple” rule.
Make Payments On Time
Another way to improve your chances is to maintain a good financial relationship with the credit card companies. Making your credit card payments on time is the first step, but by also consistently making big payments on your credit cards, companies will be more than happy to continue to increase your limits. Consistency in making large payments on time is the key to constantly gaining the approval of enlarging your credit card limits.
Using Rewards Cards
When making ordinary purchases, people mostly use cash and/or debit cards, which is a safe yet unrewarding way to increase personal benefits. If people would simply switch their usage of cash and debit cards for reward cards, their amount of skymiles and other financial rewards would automatically increase. When buying gas, going grocery shopping, getting new clothes, paying bills, and making other ordinary purchases, remember to use your rewards card.
This simple technique will help you earn skymiles that would otherwise not be gained, obviously, with cash or debit cards. Although credit cards can cause people a lot of pain when used unwisely, they can also be very rewarding when used properly and wisely.
Other ways to maximize the skymiles on your credit cards is to apply all your major purchases to the credit cards. Wisdom must be used when this technique is used, but when used properly, it can harvest huge skymile rewards. Such major investments on credit cards include buying new or used motorized machines such as cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes, boats, etc.
A brand new credit card customer can be very naïve and sometimes suffers the unfortunate consequences of credit card penalties. If teenagers simply follow the rules stated above, they will be able to avoid unfortunate late fee charges and actually gain real life rewards and advantages in the credit card business.
