Credit Cards (TFM 9)

Arthur, let's move on. Why don't you do this? Why don't you talk for a few minutes on the topic of credit cards? Because some people have them, some people don't. Some people have really small limits.

Some people have bigger limits. Why don't you take it for a few minutes and just share kind of some of your thoughts and feelings on credit cards and how you've been able to help people raise money for their business on credit cards in the past? Credit cards. I mean, credit cards, you know, really, it's just a matter of, you know, what kind of relationships that you have with the credit card company. Some people do a really good job of maintaining their credit.

And for those people, it'd be really easy to just call the credit card company and ask for a credit limit increase. And just giving them a quick call and just being like, hey, you know, I've been with you guys for X amount of years. And I use your service. I really enjoy using it. And, you know, I'm getting ready to, you know, I'm getting ready to start a business of my own.

I'm looking to invest in a little bit of education or I'm looking to invest in, you know, some type of business equipment. And I was, you know, wondering if it would be possible to raise my limits, you know, to this amount. You know, if it's $1,000, raise it to $1,500 or if it's, you know, and you could try different things. You know, if you have a $1,000 credit card, there's a good chance they're not going to raise you by, you know, $10,000 or $5,000, but you can try it. But it doesn't hurt to call all the credit card companies and ask them at the very basic level, Chris, asking for a credit limit increase.

I've seen it work many, many times. I've done it personally years ago. I don't live on credit cards anymore the way I used to. In fact, I haven't really owned a credit card, an unsecured credit card since 2008. But I know it's something that does work really well.

And, you know, one thing is I'm going to encourage people not to accumulate balances, you know, that are pretty much close to your limit because that's how you start reducing your credit score. I know this is not a call about, you know, increasing and reducing credit scores, but if you want to maintain your credit and you're going to do credit limit increases, just be careful. You know, like be, you know, be cautious with that, but also, you know, know that's a funding option for you that you want to pay back, you know, fairly quick. Got it. So a couple little nuggets there.

I mean, when it comes to credit cards, you're looking at a few different things, right? You could use existing credit cards. You know, you can – one of the things you could do is for some of you, if you have a credit card, some of you have it. It's crazy because some of you are going, hey, look, if I had a credit card, I'd spend it. Why are we even bothering talking about this?

While others, you really haven't thought about funding your business with a credit card. And the reason you haven't thought about funding it is because you're thinking about the credit card payments on a month-to-month basis. So here's a twist that I want to give you with your credit cards. For those of you that have the ability to use credit cards but you're not because you don't want to have that increased monthly payment, you don't know how you're going to pay for it, here's what I would do. I would look at your funding strategy twofold.

One is getting the funds available on a credit card. It's step one. And step two, coming up with one of these – using all this training here to come up with an alternative way to pay your credit card bill. See, if you funded something on your credit card, you fund a few thousand dollars, whatever, and your credit card payments might be a little higher than the average person, or even if you get a loan, you might have loan payments that are higher. So you might also want to have a second plan on how to raise capital to be able to – extra capital to be able to make the payments.

So let's say you have a funding resource. Well, you better have a plan in place to also raise that money. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up with bad financial advice. You're borrowing money and not paying bills and going in debt and getting bad credit. Nobody wants to do that.

So be smart about it. If you're going to use credit cards, call on the back. See if you can increase your limits. When they ask what you're going to do it for, just so you have an increase in business needs. Be very, very vague about it.

Just say, look, I've got an increase in business needs. I need to do some extra advertising. This month, I feel like – and this is where you can use your negotiating skills. Negotiate with them. A lot of times, the credit raises are based on simply numbers and statistics.

But a lot of times, it's also based on emotion. They want to fill you out of what it's for. You say, hey, I've got an increase in business costs this month. Things are looking really good. I need to put a little bit of extra advertising out there and make sure it's a good month.

So I'm just asking for a quick increase on the card to be able to cover some of those additional business needs. Speak very professionally. Be very general about it, and you should have no problem with it. So that's an example. That's an example right there of you can use existing credit cards.

You can increase limits on those existing credit cards, and you can even apply for new cards. There are several sites online that you can apply for. You can apply for several cards. When I've done this in the past, I've been turned down a lot of times by the big card manufacturers. The big card makers turn me down.

But a lot of the smaller card companies would give me – You know, maybe not the highest limit, but maybe $500 here or $1,000 there. Just to jump in and give you a resource, since we're talking on credit cards, very simple, creditcards.com. You know, depending on your situation, depending on whether or not you have good credit, bad credit, low credit, whatever it is, you know, there's just a ton of options on creditcards.com. That's a good site to go through if you're looking for a credit card. Yeah, definitely, definitely.

And just keep in mind that even if you got rejected on one, there might be a couple of other options with some of the smaller up-and-coming banks. And again, of course, when it comes to credit cards and lending and stuff like that, a lot of it has to do with the economy around us. You know, there's a lot stricter lending than there was several years ago. But what happens is a lot of times people just get it in their heads. They just think that things are worse, so they don't bother.

You know, like I have someone right now that's looking for a job and they're unemployed. And they constantly tell me about how bad it is and how difficult it is to get a job and how hard it is. But when I actually – When I actually dig deep and find out what they're doing on a day-to-day basis to get a job, I hate to say this, but they're really doing nothing. So why is it so hard? It's so hard because the media tells them it's so hard.

It's so hard because their family tells them it's so hard. It's so hard because they want it to be so hard because it helps them justify why they don't have a job. You know, in reality, it's not that hard. In reality, it's not that hard. So just make sure that before you believe the media or the hype or this and that, you know, try some things out for yourself.

You never know when something's going to happen. It's going to work.