Chase Blue Card?

While it's good to have one bank card and use it once in a while to keep a good credit rating, if you have a lot of them it may decrease the amount you can borrow. There is a credit limit on the cards, and they may add the limits and assume you have that as debt. I was told that 15 years ago by a bank, so even though I always paid off my cards each month I canceled all my store credit cards.

There is another way to get credit. You can get a small personal loan from a bank and pay the monthly bills. You can't skip a month for any reason (even if you put down extra money one month). Years ago, I got a loan from my credit union for a computer ($1000) for one year. Building credit this way is good if you don't want to be tempted with a credit card.

Yes, variable is the norm. Credit unions can be a good place to get a credit card and they are less likely to jack up your rates just because they can. Rates are usually in the 10% range from a credit union.

I know that all the Dave Ramsey fanatics will jump on board here but with all due respect to the debt free life, everyone should have a credit card. You need one to rent a hotel room or rental car, for travel purposes, etc. Sometimes a debit card just won't be treated the same. My parents and my boss are excellent credit card consumers. My mother charges gas and groceries every month, pays her balance in full every month, earns rewards (cash back) and pays no interest. My boss charges huge things that he's already saved up for like college tuition for his daughters, pays the bill in full immediately, pays no interest and racks up airline mileage. I don't think he's paid for a flight in many, many years and he travels a lot.

Congrats on paying off your debt - be careful that if you use a card, you use it for the right reasons (to book a car rental on vacation, to get purchase protection on something) and have saved in advance for the expense so you can pay it off immediately. If having a card is tempting, put it in a ziploc bag full of water at the back of your freezer so that in an emergency or for a planned reservation or expense, you can use it but it's not just sitting in your wallet every day saying "use me...you deserve those shoes!"

Well...I am obviously a huge Dave Ramsay fan and I have to offer this viewpoint:
Why on earth would you open a credit card account when you've just paid everything off?
???!!!
Now that you have better positive cash flow, quickly build a 6 months of all expenses as an emergency fund and you won't "need" a credit card for *emergencies*!

Yes--you were misinformed. You don't need "credit" to get a mortgage. Credit is largely an American myth. Better NO credit than BAD credit or high debt:credit ratio. Did you know you can often get a mortgage if you have paid rent on time or early for a period of time and have utilities in your name? True.

AND you don't need a credit car to "get a hotel, rent a car, etc., etc., etc"....all of that can easily be done with a debit card.

I have a Chase Blue card. But I pay off the balance every month so I have no idea what the interest rate is. I chose this card because they offered me 25,000 free miles to open it, no annual fee and a good rewards program.

Good credit is worth money. My credit score was better than my ex-husband's. Putting the homeowners insurance in my name after our divorce saved me $200 a year, with better coverage!

If you are serious about building back your credit, don't purchase anything you couldn't pay cash for and pay off the card balance each month. If you can't do that, then a credit card will probably not help you build a good credit record.

I'm not familiar with the Chase Blue Card. I don't understand your description of it. To answer your specific question, yes it's common to have a variable interest rate. Even without a variable interest rate in the contract they can increase the interest. I have a Target Visa and they just increased the interest. They do have to notify the card holder in advance.

In response to Denise P's comment. I too paid off my credit cards but kept one open for convenience. I planned to use it and pay the balance every month. I now have 3 credit cards with balances. I suggest that you have to be extremely committed and very careful or the same thing will happen to you. Credit Cards are just too easy to use.

Yes, one way to build credit is to have and use a credit card and pay it off every month. I've also been told that it's even better for your credit rating if you leave a small balance on it from month to month. I suggest that you talk with someone about how to build good credit. The industry has become very complicated in the last few years.

I have a Chase card and love it. I charge and pay off balance every month but we get cash back on purchases.

As for credit, we have several credit cards and were told by several people (mortgage broker/financial consultant) that even though we don't use them and they are all paid off, we should leave them open. It helps your credit score. Having a credit card that you pay on time shows your responsibility and having open lines of credit in case of an emergency also looks good. It's when you pay late or have really high balances that it starts to look negative. Also, bank credit cards are better than department store credit cards...those you want to close.

Denise P might be right on some points but we literally have no credit. No credit cards, no loans, nada. You pull up ours and it says available credit n/A, revolving credit n/a, etc. Everything is N/A. We thought this was fine. We never needed it and aren't that responsible so we thought it was just tempting fate. So I'm a 30 year old mother of 3 with a husband who is 31 and we have NO credit. Not bad or good. None!

We recently tried for a mortgage loan because we, after have the third kid, decided we finally wanted a house and our perfect apartment was no longer good enough for our family. So we thought this would be easy. Nope! Even with a good rental history and having utilities. They denied us! WHY you ask. No credit. They told us to get a credit card. Charge some stuff on it and pay the minimums on time for a year and they'd give us one.

I thought maybe it was this bank so we tried another. We did inform them in advance, because I knew they could see that someone else had checked our credit, that we already tried one company just that we didn't like what we read about them. They came back and said the same thing but they told us 6 months would make them happy.

So YES you do have to have credit to get a mortgage. The banks force you to. I went to Bank of the West and US Bank.

years ago(when they were new) you were not allow use a debit card to rent a car, etc. Now you can, but what they do is take an additional deposit from you in order to do so.

This just happened in FL w/ my sister's family... three different families rented cars from the same rental place 2 w/ credit cards 1 w/ debit card. The debit card family was charged an extra $250 deposit that was refunded when the car came back ok. B/c it was a debit card, that money came out of their checking account and was then refunded so if you choose to go this route you'll need to make sure that you have a cushion in your bank account to cover the extra they pull out.

I'm a big fan of no debt and my hubby and I are working hard to pay off out Mgt. as soon as possible, but I disagree re: not having a credit card... I think you should have ONE and just have it be a small limit until you're sure that you and your husband are able to properly manage it. Good luck and congrats of getting your cards paid off!!

I second what Denise P. says- she's exactly right!!!!

You can listen to his radio show for free on his website- love it :)
http://www.daveramsey.com/home/

I would suggest getting a credit card through a credit union, the rates are lower. I was just on Suzy Orman's website, under resources there is a link that will provide information on credit unions in your area.