Credit Card Secrets: How I Started Building Business Credit Pt 4

This credit card game can make you spend money that you don't need to be spending, and that's the cold hard truth. I rushed the process and ended up paying for my down payment for the car with my credit card, just so I could hit the welcome bonus, and I pretty much made a bad financial decision there. I hit the welcome bonus, I did get the 75,000 points, but it definitely wasn't the best financial decision at all, just to get some points.

The journey to wealth is a long walk and some may walk quicker than others, but what good is sprinting to the finish line if you pass out when you cross it? On Walk to Wealth, we enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and your first step starts right now. This is Walk to Wealth with your host, John Mendez.

I just gave you guys a masterclass on how to understand building your credit, like what factors actually go into making up your credit score. So if you haven't watched that, make sure to go tap into that one and then tap into this. It's gonna make more sense because up to this point in the story, I got my Bank of America card. I have my self credit card right or my self account, not the self credit card. Sorry, I would not recommend getting a self credit card and then from there, I got my first Chase card. I got the Chase trifecta, took me a little while and then from there I was at this point where I was thinking, all right, so now we're in like fall of 2021 now and I'm like all righty, I just got licensed as a realtor. You know, I want to start becoming more of a business owner, so let me start looking into business credit. You feel me, and the main reasons I want to start looking into business credit is one I want to start building it one. And this time it said I just got into real estate, so I'm going to start building my real estate business credit. For. Also, I want to keep my real estate and my personal expenses separate, right, I wanted to. When you become a business owner and you're self employed, it can get very easy to co-mingle. And now, now that's not tax-efficient at all, but many. If your pocket's not that big, the IRS not really worried about you, feel me. So you're not really too. You don't have to be too much worried. At least I'm not personally. I'm not telling you guys any advice, but for me, what I've learned is like the IRS isn't worried about people that aren't really making that much money. I wasn't making that much money, but still I wanted to keep my personal and my business expenses separate, mainly for tax purposes. So I got a CPA in 2022. I filed my taxes with a CPA, or for the 2021 tax report. I was filed with a CPA mainly because I just didn't want to do it. I could have done it. I wasn't making that much money, so filing it probably would have been that hard, but I was just like I'd rather not do it, like just give it to the people that know what they're doing, I feel personally, and leverage out. That's my thought on it. And then the last main reason I wanted to get business credit is that it doesn't report to your personal credit report. So it was like those are the three reasons I'm really interested in me on getting business credit. And I started doing a lot of research and I'll see all these YouTube videos on people like you got to open up like net 30 accounts and net 45 and net 60 accounts. It's getting pretty complicated pretty quickly. And I was like, okay, I see what they're getting at, but I don't really understand. And so from there I was like, well, let me just open up a regular business credit card instead of doing whatever these other people are saying. Not because they were wrong, I just felt like it was a lot of work. I wasn't really willing to put in all that extra work. So I started looking at credit cards and I stumbled across the Chase Inc cards. Now, chase Inc is Chase's business credit line, at least their main business credit line. So after doing a ton of research I was like, all right, I want to get the Chase Inc cash card. Now let me tell you about this Chase Inc cash card, the CIC. Right, it had a welcome bonus of $750 cash back or 75,000 points for 6K spend in three months. And I was like, all right, 6k spend, that's thing about Two bands a month almost, and I don't really spend that kind of money. So here's the dark side of this whole credit journey. There's a lot of time that I overspent money that I shouldn't have had to and had to tap into my savings in order to bail myself out. Now I always had money saved to bail myself out, which is another lesson of making sure you got money if you want to play this game. And I'll be fully transparent I'm not the most disciplined, I'm not the most budgeting, I'm not the most well put together. It may seem as if I am this big credit mogul and my personal finance all-in check I still got. As of the time I was recording this, I had business credit card debt. So it's like luckily it doesn't report my personal credit report, but, man, you can get trigger happy really quickly and next you know you're behind and it's just racking up interest. And I'll be super fully transparent. I got nothing to hide from you guys. I said this is my walk to life. This is the dark side that no one wants to tell you about. But back to the chasing cash card. So it has a 5% back on office supply stores, internet, cable and phone up to 25,000 combined spend, meaning you could spend 5,000 on office supply stores, another 10, or whatever, on internet, another 10 on cable and that's 25,000 spent. So up to that. Then from there from not mistaken I believe it goes back down to 1% back. So for the first 25,000 spend, you're getting a 5% back. I ain't spending $25,000. So, as it says right now so that was for me. At that time I was like all right, boom. Then you get 2% back at gas stations and 2% back at restaurants, and then from there, 1% back on everything else, and on top of that it's $0 annual fee and it has an intro APR of 0% for the first 12 months. Remember what I said your business credit, at least with these cards, doesn't report to your personal credit report. So if you do have a balance, it doesn't really matter as much, as long as you pay it off eventually. So for me, I would always recommend, as I said, paying everything in full at the end of the month. But to be fully transparent with you guys, I still have a balance on that card. That card is maxed out, to be fully transparent with you guys, and I'm working on paying that off now, and so around this time now we're getting into winter of 2022 or early 2022. Around that time I got this card and I'm like all right, how am I going to hit this crazy welcome bonus? So I knew there was a Keller Williams conference coming up, so I ended up spending the money on my card to go to the Keller Williams conference and then, if I'm not mistaken, I'm about to take it to go to Quantum Leap that year as well. All on that card. And then for my car, I'm not going to lie. So I got a 2012 Honda Accord. I got it from a dealership. I probably overpaid, honestly, but I didn't really know much about cars. So that's a lesson to me learning there is I do not rush. And so what I did is because I was so trigger happy and trying to so hard to get this welcome bonus for a car that I only had the money to be spending anyways, and that I rushed the process and ended up paying for my down payment for the car with my credit card, just so I could hit the welcome bonus, even though I didn't really have the money to spend at that time. But I was so hard pressed on trying to make sure I hit that welcome bonus that you know I didn't really care and I pretty much made a bad financial decision there. I hit the welcome bonus, I did get the 75,000 points, but it definitely wasn't the best financial decision at all. Just to get some points and then from there Some time had passed and then ended up getting the Chase Inc Unlimited card. Now the Inc Unlimited also has a 75,000 reward bonus on a 6k spend in three months. So I had no business really getting the card, honestly, and for that card I didn't even hit the welcome bonus for that one. So I got the card essentially for like no reason, because the only reason I applied for these cards is to get the welcome bonus and I missed it by like a mile. I wasn't even close to hitting that one. And so for the Chase Inc Unlimited, now it has 1.5% on everything, no matter what the category is, and then it also has a $0 annual fee and 0% APR for the first 12 months. So that card, to be fully transparent with you guys as well, I currently still have a balance on. I maxed that card out. I got approved for, if I'm not mistaken, like $5,000. On the Chase Inc Cash, if I'm not mistaken. It went up, it got bumped up, but it wasn't originally Chase at $5,000. I forget what I originally got approved for and then from there they bumped me up to $5,000. And then the Chase Inc Unlimited. I have a balance of $3,000. Or I'd credit a limit of $3,000. Now both of those cards are next up. I'm not going to lie to you guys, so I'm working on paying those cards off right now. My goal is for the end of 2023 to be completely debt free. So that's car, student loans and credit card debt. Now, luckily, all my credit card debt is on my business credit card, so it gives me some time to maneuver. But I'm not going to lie. This credit card game can make you spend money that you don't need to be spending, and that's the cold hard truth. So, as I said, I do got a bunch of benefits and perks and stuff like that, but I made some bad decisions. I'm not the world's greatest personal finance person, but I know a thing or two, a lot of things or two, and these are the scars, the battle lessons that I'm going through right now so that you don't have to go through. Make sure you know, going into a car, I don't normally ever spend $2,000 a month. I'm nowhere ever near that. My living expenses and my business expenses I don't even come up close to that, and so it's like I had no business getting that card. So unless you have a really big purchase that you plan on doing and you already have the money saved to make the purchase, I wouldn't recommend getting cards that you normally don't spend. So, for example, the MX Platinum card at least the business one, if I'm not mistaken it's like $15,000 spend in three months or six months, if I'm not mistaken. Either way, no matter how you do the math, I don't spend that much money. So that card would be a reach for me. To get Both of these Chase end cards, although they're amazing cards that I highly recommend them, I got them too soon and I put myself in a bad financial position to do so, and one of them I didn't even get the welcome bonus that I was trying so hard to get. So I put myself in a bad financial situation for essentially no reason, for no reward. So I said amazing cards, highly recommend the Chase end cards, but make sure that your monthly spend is already naturally somewhere near that and you're doing fine, so that you don't have to over extend yourself or over spend just to get a card and maybe get the welcome bonus, like I did. So that's pretty much for this episode and the next one I'm going to be telling you guys how I got Marriott Platinum Elite status, how I get to go to lounges, how I get complimentary breakfast, how I get room upgrades, how I get late checkout all the benefits and rewards whenever I go to the Marriott Hotel. So that's going to be the next episode. So I will see you guys in the next one, thank you.