Hello, whinnebers. My name is Jesse Meekham, and this is podcast number 41 for you need a budget, where we teach you four rules to help you stop living paycheck

to paycheck, get out of debt, and save more money.

Today we are going to talk about credit cards, the sleek plastic, the stuff they hock on college campuses as soon as those naive bright-eyed freshmen walk

onto the campus.

I got my first credit card when I was in college

and I was told that I needed to start building credit

and I bought a bed with the credit card thinking I would pay it off and then I didn't for a month.

So I carried a balance.

Freaked me out and I didn't do that again until we were building Wineab 3 and I was kind of putting it all on the

line and I would not do that again. So I've had some negative experiences with

credit cards but not nearly as many as most people have had. I read Dave Ramsey's

financial piece when I was 14. My dad gave it to me and I remember thinking

this makes sense. So I avoided debt pretty much except for those two instances.

And then we bought our home, which we've paid off since then.

So it's been pretty easy for me. I just avoid it. But I use a credit card all the time and we run

up actually a pretty hefty balance because I run most every business expense I can through our business credit card.

And if you carry any debt at all, if you carry, you know, if you have student loan debt,

if you have credit card debt, if you have credit card debt, if you have car debt, any debt except your house,

I don't think you should use a credit card.

I think you should just say no to every form of debt. I don't care about the advantages at this point.

Just get out of debt, pay off the cars. If you're a doctor and you have mountains of student loan

debt, maybe there's an exception somewhere in there, but I don't want to think about it or make some kind of a rule about it. So I just avoid it. Just focus on getting out of debt and go from there. But when you feel like you're operating with WYNAB, you're following the four rules, you've got your buffer in place,

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