A Personal Lesson Learned About Good Credit

All the time you hear how important maintaining a good credit score is and that point was driven home to me recently in a rather unexpected way.

I was on vacation the last week in August with my family, going to Orlando and visiting six amusement parks (albeit five were on the Disney property) in six days.

As we were traveling on the subway to Kennedy Airport, we discovered we forgot to take the cash we set aside for the trip. And yes, while we could use the automated teller machine, fees are so high these days that we prefer to avoid using machines not associated with the institutions we have banking relationships with.

So for virtually our entire trip we relied on credit cards. We used the card for low dollar amount purchases we would normally pay cash for. And that got me thinking about the “what ifs?” What if we didn’t have high credit limits because we pay our balances off? What if we didn’t have several cards−or any cards−to choose from because our credit scores stank?

The kicker to this whole situation was the resort/hotel we stayed at. Among the first things the desk told us as we checked it was that you needed to have a credit card to purchase things at the resort. While the tab can be settled with cash at the end of the stay, a credit card was needed to make purchases from the restaurants and stores on site.

So it is not just important for loan officers to teach their clients that they need good credit, they also need to make sure clients understand how to keep their credit scores high.