Life advice from a 90 year old? I’ll take it.
Backstory blog can be found here.
Remember this fella?
Picture from www.80sactual.com
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
My grandad had a proud work ethic and was proud of me when I got my first job at the age of 14. I worked 10-2pm every Saturday at Barnard’s Secondhand Books for £2.50 an hour. He was so proud in fact that he took my first week’s wages of a tenner, gave me one of his tenners in return, and framed the original with the manuscript ‘The first money I earned’. I didn’t really get it to be honest. I was 14. I just wanted to get a McDonalds. But I’ve never forgotten it.
He also told me never, ever to have a credit card, citing them as evil and the start of a downward spiral into greed. I managed to avoid having one until I was at uni and even then it was never used, given my grandad’s words echoing in my ear.
Then harder times fell and I had to use it to buy food. This is not a sob story – we’ve all been there. But I paid it off the second I got my salary that month. Even now, while I have a credit card (there’s little escaping them), it’s there not to be used.
As a family, we have debt. I have an unnoticable* hangover from four years of university fees and there are other things that have racked up over the years, but we pay these off when we can. Most importantly, before they come back and bite us on the bum. To be debt free would be brilliant. We’re working on it.
Time for some financial planning, methinks.
*It comes off my salary each month if I have earned enough and it always has done. Do not freak out, dear teenagers off uni looking forward to a £16k debt. You’ll barely notice it.