What they don't tell you about Credit Card travel hacking

 So I'm a fan of credit card hacking.  Which is signing up for Credit Card to get the award bonus and using those bonuses and benefits to travel for near free.  I recently did a driving trip with my kids to see my Grandparents.  We covered 5 states over and stayed for 6 days.  Outside of gas it only cost us 330 to cover 3 adults 2 kids and 2 dogs. Not to bad.   

All these sites that dedicate themselves to travel hacking like the points guy or nerd wallet don't tell you about business cards.  Many of the reward/Fi sites always talk about is levering business cards. They not only have great bonuses, but don't count toward your Chase 5/24 limit.  Signing up for a business card is easy. You provide a justification. They can range to an established business, blog, to selling something on ebay.  Now what they don't tell you if that these business bonus are usually big, but require a higher spend like 15k in 3 months for 100k points and the big hit in the face is they can give you a very low credit limit like 5k.  Which mean you have to keep paying off you credit card constantly to free up enough credit to get to the 15k.  Ok that isn't easy, but during the right time of year it can be. Like paying taxes, car insurance, or paying school tuition. But then again you have to keep paying off the card all the time. What a pain.  So if you want to go down this route be careful of this issue. 

How to deal with Collections

 I've had to deal with collections twice. Both were mistakes, but something I still had to deal with.

The first one was when was lawn company did unwanted work on our lawn and the second was a dentist bill they auto sent to collections because the bill exceeded $300. 

You need to deal with these immediately.  First things to do is call the company the collections is for to get it resolved. If you need to pay a bill pay it. If it's like my first one, get a manager on the phone and get it in writing the issue is resolved.  Second is to send a letter to the collection company. This is very standard and professional.  There are variations of these to use as a template everywhere.  

The credit score game

 Your credit score can be thought of like your grade.  It is a score credit agencies use to rate you against others on how you will do paying back your loans or credit.  

First thing you must know that this is a very bias system. It is system that reward people for taking out lots of credit and being able to pay it off. So those with higher income are more likely to have better scores which doesn't mean they are more worthy.

Luckily for all of use we can play the game in our own way and use the system to our advantage.  The first and most important thing to always pay your bills on time which should be easy by setting up auto payments.  Second is to work on reducing or better eliminating any balance carry over. This can be difficult, but should be everyone's goal.  Last is history. The length you keep a credit card open the better. So if you have a couple of good card or you have one you have had forever keep it open. If these card don't provide much in the terms of rewards just put the cards in your socks drawer and get them out once very 6 months.  

Keeps this up and your score will increase and will help you get the great rate for a home load.  Some will say all debt is bad.  That is true, but for 99% of us loans are part of life and since our world requires them we will use this tool and make them our own.