5 Easy Ways To Heal Your Credit

As soon as I turned 18, the credit card offers started rolling in.

I didn’t know anything about adulting at that point, and I knew even less about finances or money. I knew I didn’t have any money, and I knew my parents never had any money. Their marriage ended largely due to trust issues surrounding money.

I was still a teenager when I moved into my first apartment to escape the stressors of my childhood home.

Once the powers that be tracked me down and realized I was of legal age, I was bombarded with junk mail from retailers. I was enticed to “Sign Up Now With Zero Interest for a Year!”. All I had to do was wait for the mailman to deliver this magical credit card that would give me all my heart’s desires.

Like that time at Macy’s when I surrendered to my sweater obsession.

Seeing my name in shiny gold lettering, envelopes littered with exclamation points was all so exciting. Visa… and Mastercard… and Discover… oh my!

They were courting the inner child of mine who had grown up in poverty, and I was smitten.

The funny money and I were hot and heavy, getting serious early on in our whirlwind romance.

When Christmas rolled around, I salivated at the thought of buying my family Christmas gifts. Gifts I could never afford while working two jobs and going to community college. In a cloud of fiscal ignorance, the once-forgotten junk mail became my ticket to freedom. And more…