First Credit Card?

For many years I couldn't get a credit card, because I wasn't stable enough and/or had a good enough salary. After wife and I bought our house here in Colorado, which was my first home buy and I was 52, pre-approved credit cards started rolling in to us. I was totally shocked, because I had never owned a credit card.

The last credit card I've got is Amazon, and, due to our lower income, was very surprised that I was approved for it.

How old were you when you got your first one?

 

Surprisingly, I was 18. I worked part-time at Sears when I graduated from high school and was starting college. I needed tires for my car and went to the credit department in the store where I worked. I was able to get a very small credit account limit and bought the tires one at a time. My dad was so proud of me for buying my own tires!

 

I must have been in my late 30's back in the early 80's. Had a good steady job, but Discover still wouldn't approve me the first time. Made it on the second try.

A few years later, the credit card companies started sending invitations in the mail (to everyone, not just me).

 

My first credit card was Discover.

 

My first card was Discover. I paid off Discover and closed out my account after about three years.
Then I got an American Express for Travel Expenses with I was a purchasing agent. Then I got a
Master Card for business travel and personal use. It's hard to handle travel expenses with out a
credit card. I still have the Master Card but have resisted other credit card offers. I went several
years when I didn't travel for any company without a credit card. I always feared getting in too deep
with a credit card because that can be a heavy burden.

 

My first card was a Sears card that I got when I was 19. That was in the 50s and I had that card until sometime in the 80s.

 

We had (note word, "had") a Bass Pro credit card, but because we didn't use it enough, our account was closed. Some other cards we had, we turned into a Debt Relief Program. Paid them so much a month for all the cards we gave them, until the cards were paid off and accounts were closed. That didn't hurt our credit rating/score at all. Surprising, but it didn't.

 

It was back in the dark ages when banks were reluctant to give women cards because, well, they weren't....men....

I had a very-well-paying job with a major city newspaper and applied for a charge card. The bank issued it in my husband's name with an extra card for me (with his name on it).

NOW, mind you, my husband was a full-time doctoral student with no income other than the GI Bill, which went largely for tuition and books and an occasional gig here and there.

The bills were paid totally from my income but I couldn't get a card because.....altogether now.....I wasn't a man. I was a woman of childbearing age who just might fall down and come up pregnant.

When we bought a house the next year, I had to declare that I didn't plan to procreate again, but that's another rant for another day.......

 

I had Sears and J C Penny cards back when store cards were the only option. I don't remember when I got my first VISA card but it was long ago.

I keep and use two cards now, Discover and VISA

 

Isn't it infuriating to think back on those days??? I very well recall when women weren't allowed to have credit in their own name. Also, as recently as the mid '80s our family was complete and after the birth of my youngest son I scheduled a tubal ligation. The nurse brought in a consent form THAT MY HUSBAND HAD TO SIGN. I didn't have the right to make decisions about my own BODY. In the mid-1980s!

So many things have changed for women; my daughters have no idea what it was like 'in olden days.'

And now, back to the credit card discussion.

 

My first credit card wasn’t actually a credit card as such. I was on the New Orleans city ledger which served as a kind of universal credit throughout New Orleans. The city did however issue me a Diner’s Club Card and a Carte Blanche when they found that the ledger was getting too difficult to manage.
All that said, I rarely used the privilege and later when I got my American Express card, I used it even less so that went down the tubes quickly.
Today, I deal in straight up cash.
Like Dave Ramsey, my credit score is “0” and that’s the way I like it.

 

I had a couple of department store cards and regular credit card in my 20's. I was having a really good time until I couldn't pay them. Had to go to my Dad. He told me that taking something out of the store I didn't have the money to pay back was no different than shop lifting. In my great grief of disappointing him, I never used anything but a gas credit card and debit card for the rest of my years. No telling how much trouble his words saved me from.

 

I was 22

 

I'm not one of those who have a long string of credit cards unreeling from their wallets when they open them...I have but ONE card...my VISA, and at the checkstands when they ask "credit or debit"? I NEVER say debit!

Credit transactions are between me and the creditor...I don't want a THIRD party balancing my account!

Hal