CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A recent report by Bankrate found more Americans have been carrying credit card debt for at least a year.
Coastal Bend resident Katherine Sims said she’s been using her credit card more often.
“We have been using our credit cards a little bit more. Luckily our interest rate hasn’t gone up because we took it out quite a long time ago,” Sims said.
Sims is doing some back-to-school shopping and she’s putting it on the credit card.
"We follow the Dave Ramzy method, so we are doing the debt snowball,” Sims said. “We’ve been paying down on it quite a bit.”
In the credit repair business, Good Credit for Lifespecializes in advising people who have bad credit. CEO Karina Alvarez said while credit cards are excellent tools, there’s a lot of misinformation about how to use it.
“The higher your balance especially once its maxed out - the worse it is for your score. In many cases it can drop your credit score by 100 points,” Alavarez said.
Alvarez told Action 10 News that good credit for life helps people according to their financial situation.
“It’s more about helping them realize a budget and implanting something like the snowball method or the avalanche method which helps them focus on one account based on the amount or the interest. Pay that off and apply that amount to the next one,” Alvarez said.
So Sims followed Alvarez's advice so she can be stress free and have her credit card there for emergencies.
“We’ve been paying down our credit card quite a bit but because of inflation we haven’t been able to do as much lately,” she said.
