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My name is Joshua. I am your host, and today we continue our credit card week here on Radical Personal Finance with a discussion on who should not have credit cards. All this week and last week, I have been focused on the topic of credit cards as we celebrate the launch of my newest course, which is called How to Borrow Money Safely and Never Pay Interest Using Credit Cards.

And so on Monday, of course, I shared with you one of my arguments, an excerpt from the course called Credit Card Debt is a Very Safe Form of Debt. I also shared with you on Tuesday another argument called Credit Card Loans Can Provide a Way to Privately Purchase Goods and Services.

On Wednesday, yesterday, I shared with you an excerpt of the course called How to Manage Cash While You Pay Off Your Credit Cards. And today, I'm not going to share with you an excerpt, but I want to answer one important question, which is who should not have credit cards and frankly, who should not take my course because as I said to you on Monday, my course is designed if you have a credit card currently of any kind, one or 50, or if you think you might ever have a credit card in the future, I really want you to learn from what I have to teach you in this particular course.

So remember this week, if you sign up before we go on, sign up this week prior to Monday, October 15, 2018, you can save 10 bucks by going to radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcardcourse to sign up and then using the coupon code creditcard10, T-E-N, that'll save you 10 bucks, brings the total cost of the course down to $29.

So do that now if you haven't done it yet because tomorrow I am hosting a live Q&A call for anyone who has purchased the course and I really want to actually have some callers and not do that by myself. And I want to answer your specific questions in that Friday live Q&A call.

Now let's talk about who shouldn't have credit cards. Here is the major challenge in the world of credit cards. There are a lot of us who have been burned by debt. One of the worst things about credit cards, one of the big arguments against credit cards is that they make overspending very, very easy.

If I were to go and to try to figure out what I think is an archetypal example of how credit card debt works, I would go back and use my own story because I think it's probably about the same as most people. I first signed up for my first credit card on my 18th birthday and I did so because I was a personal finance nerd and I'd read all kinds of books on how to improve my credit score.

I knew how important my credit score was and I decided that the best way to do that was to sign up for a credit card, of course. So, of course, it was a very small credit card. Now when you're building up your credit score, one of the first things that you want to do is start to establish credit accounts and then to let those credit accounts season.

They need time because, of course, one of the big influences on your credit score is the length of credit that you have. And so I started to use my credit card, but I was very, very focused on always paying it off. Very, very focused. Most people are. Most people sign up for a credit card with a clear intention of never carrying a balance.

I have again and again and again heard people say, "I use credit cards and I never carry a balance." I think that's great. I did the same thing for at least a couple years. And then at that point in time, I was kind of in a bind. I think this happened during the end of my sophomore year of college.

And here's what my personal situation was. I was working my way through college. I paid for my own college and I'm very thankful for that. It was a great thing. My parents always said, "We'd love for you to go to school, but pay for it yourself." So work hard and get good grades.

I love that plan. It was a great plan. So I paid for my own college, but I didn't have enough scholarships to cover all of my tuition, and I chose to go to a fairly expensive private school. I also chose to live on campus because I wanted to have the full so-called college experience, which also brought a whole bunch of other expenses, which in hindsight were unnecessary and I wish I hadn't done it, but whatever.

That was the decision that I made as an 18-year-old. My freshman year of college, I worked a total of about three jobs throughout the year in order to pay for my schooling. And I was able to get through my freshman year of college without borrowing money. I had scholarships that covered some of my expenses.

I had an on-campus job in my dorm that gave me a small amount of income. I spent my weekends doing construction work during the day, especially Saturday. I had one employer who was building an addition on his house. He was also in the construction trade, and so I'd go and work with him every Saturday in addition to some other stuff whenever I had school breaks.

And then I also drove a bicycle rickshaw around the city where I lived on Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night to provide income from driving the bicycle rickshaw around. Those are my three jobs. And frankly, I was tired by the end of the year. I was tired. And I spent so much time working that I missed out on some of the other playing that I could have done if I hadn't been spending so much time working.

When you go and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, you have a job in the afternoon and evenings outside of your class, then on Thursday evening, you go down and ride a bicycle rickshaw from what, I guess, probably about six o'clock till 10 o'clock. And then on Friday, you go and ride from five o'clock until 2 a.m.

And then you get up early and at 8 a.m. you're on the construction job site, work from eight till four, and then four o'clock, go home, shower, put on your clothes, and go ride the bicycle rickshaw from five or six until 2 a.m. again. Well, you could understand I was a little bit tired.

And so I decided that I was going to take it easier. So I pulled back and in my sophomore year of school, I pulled back my course load from I think I'd been taking 15 and 18 hours my freshman year, pulled it back to 12 or 15 hours, and I decided to quit working.

And so I took out student loans, but I didn't know enough to take out more student loans for my expenses. I just took out student loans for my tuition, which also covered my room and board. And I didn't know how to cover my other expenses. So I went ahead and started using my credit card to pay for food, put gas in the car, et cetera.

And my credit card started, debt started to build. Now my junior year of school, I studied abroad. And I, again, my credit card debt started to build. And I wound up coming back from my study abroad with significant amount of student loan debt and significant credit card debt, not knowing what to do.

And I experienced that first place that most of us have been. I've got a bunch of debt, and I don't know how to pay it off, which means I had to go to work. Now I worked really hard my senior year, and I paid off the credit card debt, paid off the credit card debt, paid off my student loans, was able to graduate, sorry, was able to pay off all my debt before and graduate debt free, which was great.

Until a number of years later, when I was building a business and I didn't have enough money and I started borrowing money and credit card debt again. And along the way, I've made all the decisions about, I'm never going to borrow credit card debt. And then I'm going to embrace credit card debt fully.

And I've vacillated back and forth. A major influence on my life when I was in college was the teaching of Dave Ramsey against debt, against credit cards. And I followed his advice. At least once or twice, I entirely canceled every credit card that I have. I shared with you last week that when I was in college at that point in time, I had worked hard to build up my credit card, available credit limits up to about a hundred thousand dollars.

Well, after college, when I got out of debt, I canceled all of those and I had no credit cards, no access to credit. Now here's what I've learned watching and doing financial counseling with many people. Most people's experiences will reflect my own. In the sense that we are committed to not carrying a credit card balance until we actually do carry a credit card balance.

Or we're committed to not borrowing money on credit cards. And we may even cancel our credit cards until we wind up in a situation where we see no other alternative. And then we go ahead and apply for them again. I can't remember the exact details of when I applied for credit cards after having canceled them all, but it went much like many people's lives where I had canceled all my credit cards.

I'm not going to go borrow the money. And then I went into credit card debt again. And hopefully this doesn't sound too harsh, but you're probably just about like me because in my years doing this, I have stopped believing people when they said, I don't carry a balance or I don't have credit card debt.

Now it's not that people are necessarily insincere about that. I believe people when they say, yeah, I don't mean to carry a balance, but life happens. And I could take 15 minutes and describe specific people that said, I don't borrow money on credit cards or I don't carry a credit card debt balance.

And then a couple of years later, I found out that they had one. What happened in between? Well, life happened. Nothing changed. And it hurt me for a while because I stopped counting on people. I stopped believing anything people said till I just realized that just like me, they believed it when they said it, but they hadn't thought ahead to understand the situation that they might be in someday.

And I don't think this credit card business of should I have a credit card or not have a credit card is as simple or as black and white as many people wish it were. Because although credit cards can be extremely dangerous, they can also be extremely safe. And although credit cards can enable routine overspending, they can also be a way out of a crisis.

Many people have tried to start a business using their credit cards and have failed completely and declared bankruptcy. Many people have also successfully started a business using financing from their credit cards. Credit cards can be valuable. They can be very useful. But circumstances are different for different people. Now here is the conviction that I have come to.

I make this very clear in the course in a module called, "Should You Use Credit Cards as a Source of Financing?" It's my personal belief that you should never accumulate credit card debt. You should never accumulate credit card debt. And I will fight tooth and nail to try to persuade you of that position.

I will fight tooth and nail to try to help you to avoid what I've seen so many people do. Most commonly, somebody loses their job, they get their hours cut back at work, something happens and they don't curb their spending because they think it's a temporary problem. That's where most people wind up in credit card debt.

They think, "Well, I just got laid off, but I'll probably get a job in a month or two so it won't be a big deal to pay off a month or two worth of credit card debt." And then six months later, they're still unemployed and they're stuck. Or they get their hours cut or their pay cut for whatever reason and they think, "Well, it's only temporary, it's only a small amount," and they don't make drastic decisions.

And I'm here to beg you and plead with you, don't do that. First, don't be a stupid young person routinely overspending as so many of us have, buying stupid things that you can't afford and paying retail prices because you just swipe your credit card. Don't do that. But you know that already.

And I'm here to beg with you and plead with you, don't ever allow yourself to choose to go into debt when you're facing personal hardship. It will be easier for you to always cut your expenses quickly than it will be for you to go into debt. It'll be much easier for you to make that decision because it shortens the overall length of your pain.

If you lose your job and you find yourself without choices, meaning you don't have income, but yet you need to put some food in your refrigerator, don't use a credit card. Because if you do use a credit card and you go out and this month you spend your typical $700 on food, here's the problem.

You'll accumulate $700 of credit card debt, which you'll then maintain until six months from now you get reemployed again. But six months from now you're going to have a food budget again of $700. So now six months from now you're going to have double the food expenses. You're going to have $700 of, let's just pretend that today is October, so six months from now is April.

You're going to have the $700 April budget and you're going to have the $700 October budget to pay off. It's hard to pay $1,400 off in a month. You say, of course, nobody would pay $1,400 off in a month. They'll just pay $14 off in a month. And what that means is this month, the October food budget, this month will get extended out over the next few years because it's going to take you years to pay off the credit card debt.

When you finance a problem using debt, you extend that problem far beyond where it ever needs to be extended. So if you lose your job and in October you need food, don't put October's food bill on the next year. Rather, October should be the time when you cut your budget down and you change your diet and you eat beans and rice and peanut butter and bread every day.

October should be the month that you go down to the food pantry and ask for help. October should be the month that you apply for food stamps and get the money and go to the grocery store in October. October should be the month that you say yes to your neighbor who wants to give you bags of zucchini and tomatoes.

October should be the month that you go over to your parents' house and say, "Mom and Dad, do you have any extra food?" And they say, "Sure, here's a $200 gift certificate to the local grocery store." Do that in October because then in April, when you're well employed, you will only have April's expenses to deal with.

So I don't ever want you to go into credit card debt. I don't ever want you to be in that desperate situation. Now if you're in that situation, my course will help you to get out of it, but it will also help you to never go there again. Credit cards really can be a danger.

So who should not have credit cards and who should not buy my course? If you're a debt addict, as with many addictions, I think you better be pretty careful. This is reality. If you made a solemn promise, a solemn vow to yourself to say, "I will never borrow money," and I mean that comprehensively, if you make that solemn promise, "I will never borrow money," and you are absolutely committed to that, and I mean absolutely, then of course you could do without credit cards.

Now I've never really met the person who would make that solemn of a vow. Maybe Dave Ramsey, sorry, let me rephrase. Dave Ramsey has made that vow, and I'm sure that there are some people who have. I've talked to a few. I should modify my statement. I have talked to a few people, and frankly, I am much closer to that than probably you are.

I'm 99% there. I am 99% there. But if you're in that situation, then you don't need credit cards, and you don't need my credit card course. But I want to ask you, are you absolutely there? Because if you're not absolutely there, I still want you to learn what I have to teach you in the course.

Because most people are not absolutely there. They're 80% there. They're 90% there. But it's that last 10% that is so tricky. Because the time where that 10% matters is not normal life. It's crisis. The time to think about crisis is now. The time to think about what you're going to do then is now when you're not in crisis.

Now I don't have addictions that some people have. Some people have drug addictions. Some people have alcohol addictions. In the past, the closest I've ever gotten to an addiction in the past, I was addicted to pornography. If you've ever been addicted to something, you know how hard it can be, how hard you have to fight to think in advance what you're going to do in that circumstance.

If you were an alcohol addict, you know that if you're going to choose not to drink, you've got to put up major, major safeguards against drinking or drugs. If you're a pornography addict or if you've ever been addicted to pornography, you know that perhaps somebody might be able to go there.

Somebody else might be able to go to that website. But for you, you've got to stay 100 miles away because that will trigger those chains of addiction. It'll trigger that well-worn groove in your mind that winds up in a place you don't want to be. And part of maturity is recognizing where you are weak.

Part of maturity is recognizing that you're simply not a robot and making good decisions in advance so that when the door is opened, you don't walk through it. If there's something to you that's important, then you'll put in place safeguards to make sure you don't go where you don't want to be.

And the same thing can happen with debt. So if you are addicted to overspending, if you've proven again and again that you don't have self-control, it's not a bit of problem in my mind if you just recognize that and say, "I'm not going there." Now while you're on your way out of debt, I think you need to take my course because I can get you out cheaper.

But it's fine with me if you cancel all your credit cards on the other side. And I don't think you should feel ashamed about that. I simply caution you on this. Make sure that decision is absolute. Make sure it's irrevocable. Make sure you are 100% committed to saying, "I'm never going to be in debt." Make sure it's absolute because if not, well, you'll wind up stuck.

You'll wind up deep in debt. You won't have done the stuff that I think you should do to prepare yourself for it. And you'll wind up exploited by the credit card industry instead of learning how to exploit the credit card industry. I don't think you're stupid for avoiding credit cards.

I don't think you're stupid for avoiding credit cards any more than I think that somebody who entirely avoids ever drinking any alcohol is stupid for entirely avoiding alcohol. Please don't ever let yourself feel stupid because you make an absolute decision. If your dad was a stumbling drunk and you say, "That's it.

I'm never drinking." That's not stupid. It's not. And the same thing applies to credit card debt. If you come from financial ruin and your dad was a stumbling debt addict that's in your background, it's not stupid. Just honestly assess it. And if that's the case, then I say, "Good for you." Here's the reality.

I close with this thought. Number of years ago, I read a lot of fancy strategies. I talk about a lot of fancy, sexy financial strategies. Sometimes these things work. You know what though? A lot of times they don't. It's funny. I spent years as a financial advisor and of course the biggest, the number one most powerful financial guru and most listened to voice in the United States of America is Dave Ramsey.

And you want to talk about a guy who just annoys financial advisors generally, Dave Ramsey, because he's simplistic. Now there's a fair argument to be made that's overly simplistic. I appreciate actually his over simplifying at this point because it's effective. It's more effective than what I do sometimes. But the reality is that if you just follow simplistic advice, it works.

Now you'll get made fun of for it, but it works. It really does work. And you shouldn't feel ashamed about that. Same thing applies to debt as it applies to anything else in life. The teetotalers are right. If you never take your first drink of alcohol, you're never going to become an alcoholic.

If you never do drugs, you're never going to be a drug addict. If you never go on long business trips alone with people of the opposite sex or put yourself in situations of people with the opposite sex, you're not going to cheat on your spouse. And if you don't open credit cards, you're not going to be in credit card debt.

So don't feel bad about that. I respect you. I respect your decision. I don't fault it one bit. I don't think you're wrong. I don't think you're right for everyone, but I don't think you are wrong and hope that encourages you. Credit card debt can be a tremendous, tremendous trap.

And if you are absolutely committed to never ever having a credit card and never ever borrowing money in any form, because that's where I want to emphasize, I would rather borrow money on a credit card than many other forms of financing. But if you're committed to that, hey, go for it.

Now for everyone else, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcardcourse. Again, radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcardcourse and sign up for my course. Please use coupon code credit card 10 this week until October 15, 2018. And you will save 10 bucks. Total cost, 29 bucks. Guarantee you, you'll learn how to save potentially thousands and thousands of dollars of interest.

Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/creditcardcourse. Use coupon code credit card 10. And remember to join me tomorrow. If you have purchased the course, join me tomorrow for a live Q&A call on any question you have related to credit cards. Thank you. Don't just dream about paradise. Live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale.

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