Page 16 - Winning The Credit Game Bundle (CK Patrick)

4 THE CREDIT GAME

debts, bills, and felt like I’d never get ahead. And with employers
checking my credit report before deciding whether to hire me, it
seemed as though I wouldn’t be able to get a good paying job to pay
off my debts until after I’d paid off my debts. It was a Catch-22. And I
had a child to support: failure was not an option.
I began to research the problem. How exactly had my credit score
gotten so bad? That was simple: by charging money on credit cards
and not paying it back, not paying my bills on time or at all, and care-
lessly dismissing my student loans.
But how did I fix it? That was more complicated. It involved not
only paying my debts, but also navigating a complicated maze of
letter-writing, credit monitoring, interest rate calculations, and
numerous other complex and time-consuming tasks.
But there was a silver lining: the fact that these tasks existed meant
that there was something I could do. I didn’t have to just wait for
money to magically appear and hope my credit score got better. So I
threw myself into doing the things I learned about through my
research. I threw myself into it with a passion.
Slowly but surely, I began to see progress. I learned from many iter-
ations of trial and error, where I tried something that just plain didn’t
work or even made the situation worse. I’ll share my mistakes with you
in this book, so you won’t have to make them all yourself.
By 2014, I was able to finance a newer Nissan Maxima. In 2016, my
heart sang as I closed on ownership of my first home—a four-bedroom
house with a low-interest fixed-rate mortgage and only paid $422 out
of my pocket on the closing date!
My home ownership was possible because of the way I had built
up my credit score, and learned to use credit to grow my wealth
instead of growing debts, over the preceding years. I’d gone from
being a broke single mom struggling through college to a four-
bedroom homeowner with big plans to continue growing generational
wealth for my family. I had essentially jumped straight from one
socioeconomic class to another.
And without my credit education, this would never have been
possible.