5 TERRIBLE Credit Card Strategies You Should NOT Follow

I have used credit cards to build my credit score so I can access a lot of capital for business and to earn points, miles, and free hotel nights so I can travel the world for free. Now, these are real strategies that take time to perfect and may not be suitable for everyone, but can provide real value. However, there are a lot of charlatans on the internet shilling crazy too-good-to-be-true style strategies that you should not follow, and in this video, I want to go through a load of them, and some of these are pretty funny. Oh, and this video is brought to you by Smart Credit, but more on that later. Number 1. Filing for bankruptcy to get out of credit card debt. So check out this thoughtful advice from a gentleman who goes by the TikTok username of Green Thumb Got Bans. I don't know what that means, although it seems that he either changed his username or his account got shut down. What if I told you there was a way to buy things like this $100,000 watch without spending a single dollar of your own money, using business credit like this, that you never actually have to pay back? Yeah, already feels like a scam, but let's keep going and get to the strategy. With business credit, you are not personally held responsible for that line of credit. So let's say, for example, how I got this watch. I was able to open a business that I didn't really give a s*** about. I went and opened business credit cards in that account. I then proceeded to go on, buy this $400,000. I'm going to turn around and sell it to a jeweler for $80,000 in cash, which now gives me the cash. I'll file bankruptcy on the company. I'll never have to actually pay it back. So this whole scheme relies on the fact that he thinks he is not liable for debt linked to a business. But if we look at the terms and conditions of the Amex Business Platinum, which is literally one of the cards he held up in the video, one of the first lines says, you are agreeing to be jointly and severably liable with the company for all charges to the account. In addition, it then goes on to say the account will only be used for commercial or business purposes. I'm pretty sure a $100,000 luxury timepiece doesn't qualify as a commercial or business expense. He already said he was going to sell it for $80,000. So at a loss just to get the cash. So, guys, this is not an infinite money glitch. You cannot just decide not to pay your business credit card and have the company declare bankruptcy and then everything is fine. You will still be personally liable. I like this comment from someone on Twitter. Dude will make a killing selling cigarettes in prison. Right. I mean, he's good at talking. Maybe he could sell snake oil or pyramid schemes. But to be fair to the guy, he did release another video saying that he was just trolling and it isn't even possible to get a $100,000 credit limit on a card for a brand new company that you don't care about. The funniest part about this whole video is how many guys thought I was being serious. You had to be stupid to believe that you can open a brand new business, get American Express and be able to spend $100,000 without any history in the business or any of that kind. And that is true. I'm guessing he never did what he claimed he did in the first video. He was probably just in the pool at an Airbnb he rented wearing a watch like this luxury bling rapper, full ice fake diamond men's quartz watch, hip hop lover gift that you can pick up on eBay for $25. All right, let's move on to another one. Number two, the 15 three payment hack. Take a listen to what this guy says. What is the 15 three credit card payment hack? It involves making two credit card payments a month. You make one payment 15 days before your statement date and the second one three days before it. OK, so why would that make a difference? As long as you pay as much as you are going to pay on your card just before the statement date, it will have a positive effect on your credit score because that is when the card reports to the credit bureaus. So the 15 and three numbers seem to just be arbitrary numbers plucked out of thin air. And, you know, we like numbers in this game, right? Like 524 rule with Chase or whatever. So, yeah, 524, 15, three sounds cool. But to show you just how stupid this one is, this is the video that automatically played on TikTok immediately after I watched it. Simone is asking, does the 15 three method really work? I keep seeing it on TikTok. No, I wish that thing will just crawl in a hole and die. Yeah, I mean, so I think people know that this one is kind of dumb. Basically, making any additional payment during your billing cycle does not show up as an extra payment. So if someone tells you this, when you're paying your credit card every single month, you should be paying it multiple times. It actually helps super weird, but it helps with your credit score. So even if you're paying a thousand dollars, just pay five hundred dollars twice or two hundred dollars five times and it will literally help with your credit score. It's such a weird thing, but it actually works. It is super weird because it's not true. It will not show as an extra payment and it will not report a lower utilization to the credit bureau's mid billing cycle. Your cards only report on your statement close date. So whatever your balance is on that date, that is what is reported. There is one exception, and that is for Chase cards. If you pay them down completely to zero mid billing cycle, they will do a one off report showing a zero balance. But in general, if you want a low balance on your statement close date, just pay your card right before that date and you can find out what that date is on your credit card statement. It will be called the closing date or the statement closing date, something like this. All right, let's move on. But first, if you take credit cards and credit in general seriously, you want to protect and build your credit score. Like if you don't build your credit score, it could literally cost you hundreds of dollars a month and thousands of dollars a year. Take this guy because he built his credit score up to 760. He is paying one thousand nine hundred and thirty one dollars a month on a mortgage on a house that he borrowed three hundred thousand dollars to buy. Compare that with this guy who didn't build his credit score. He's down around six twenty and his interest rate is around two percent higher. He is paying two thousand two hundred and fifty seven dollars a month on the same loan. That's three hundred and twenty six dollars more per month. Three thousand nine hundred and twelve dollars more per year and one hundred and seventeen thousand three hundred and sixty dollars more over the 30 year life of that mortgage. And that's why I've partnered with Smart Credit, an online platform that can help you achieve your best credit score possible. Smart Credit lets you easily track and understand your different credit scores. Their score builder gives you a custom 120 day plan to maximize your score. And many users may see an improvement of up to 60 points on average. If you have things on your credit report like missed payments that bring your credit score down, you can even have Smart Credit write a letter on your behalf for a goodwill correction. You can report a credit reporting error and more to potentially get that negative item removed. Their score boost will show you exactly what to do to help you reach a certain future credit score with your credit utilization, which is 30 percent of how your overall credit score is worked out. This includes exactly which cards to pay down and which you can spend on. And they even give you the optimal payoff date for every card you have while calculating your potential point increase. On top of that, they also have their privacy master service that scans data broker sites for your info every 14 days and submits takedown requests. This means your personal information, such as where you live, who your family is, etc., won't be so easy to find and thus neither will stealing your identity. So try Smart Credit, an all in one credit platform that protects your personal information and helps you build credit fast. You can try it for seven days for the amazing price of one dollar with my link below. Number three, destroy your kid's credit. Now, this one really cracks me up. If you want to build for your kid's future, take out a credit card in their name, but not to build credit to destroy it, to destroy it. OK, let's keep watching and we'll see where he's going with this. I have 18 different credit cards maxed out in my son's name and his credit score is a dumpster fire. So maybe he's using that money to invest for his kid's future, I'm assuming. I mean, I'm sure they're all zero percent APR deals on those cards and the money is earning like eight percent in the S&P 500. But no, it appears that this is a creative way of motivating his child to make it in business and become a millionaire. I started with nothing. Imagine what my son can do if he starts with less than nothing. Now, OK, he's obviously trolling with this one, but parents with bad credit setting up credit card or loan accounts in their children's names and trashing their kid's credit scores. That phenomenon is way more common than you may think. Now, it's totally illegal and it is actually identity theft and they could get in serious trouble with the law for it. But many kids who are adults, once they find out, don't want to sue their own parents. In theory, a parent wouldn't be able to get a credit card for someone under 18. But it seems many parents have found a way around this just using their kid's social security number and then perhaps lying about their age on the application. So do not use this strategy, whether it's to have your kid start from less than nothing and build them up or because you want to live the high life with loans in their name. If your kid decides to sue you when they find out, you could end up in jail. And if you are a kid worrying about your own parents, maybe your dad just got a new Lamborghini that you have no idea how he financed. Well, if you're 13 or older, you can check your credit report at annualcreditreport.com. The site will give you one credit report from all three of the credit bureaus for free every year. And you'll be able to see if there's any new credit activity such as credit cards or loans or collections associated with your credit file. And if there is, then you'll be able to sue your parents. Number four, manufactured spend. So you may have seen people who claim that you can live off just cash back from your credit card. You can literally have no money and just a credit card and you can make a living. This is how much I made in the last two weeks just from using my credit card. So he made $1,100 in two weeks. That's $2,200 a month. How is he living off of that? He said he was making a living just from his credit card. And I know I got some people that's going to say, oh, you have to pay for stuff just to get those. Nah, I'm artificially spending money, which means I'm spending money without really spending money, if you know what I mean. So what this guy is talking about is manufactured spend. Usually this involves doing something like this. Go to a department store with your credit cards and buy the $500 gift cards. You buy the gift cards with your credit cards and then go buy money orders with the gift cards that you just bought with your credit cards. Then you deposit those money orders into your bank account. And then you use that money to pay the credit card off, canceling out the money you spent, but you still earned a load of credit card points or cash back in the process. Only problem is many of the strategies taught for free online don't work. I love how this guy just admits that probably this doesn't work in the comments. Like he admits his own strategy doesn't work. It's just for the views, guys. Just for the views. Doesn't matter if it's correct or not. As long as a load of people watch the video, he's happy. Now, there are definitely manufactured spend strategies that do work, but you tend to hear about them only after the fact, once whatever method it was has been shut down. For example, the presidential $1 coin act of 2005 allowed credit card holders to buy US $1 coins. You know, the ones you normally only get in change from vending machines. You could buy those directly from the US mint with no commission or fees and free shipping. So if you spent say $500 on dollar coins, you would get $500 coins sent to your house for free and you would then be able to take them to a bank and deposit them and use that money to pay off your credit card. But you just earned a load of frequent fly miles or points or whatever on that transaction. Now, many people under the radar of general public awareness earned thousands or even millions of points and miles this way. That was until a US mint shut it down in 2011. And this article from NPR is the way that many people found out that it was even a thing, but it was too late for them to try it by then. So while manufactured spend is a strategy that can be done, do be careful with it because it is easy to get your accounts shut down if the credit card companies figure out what you are doing. And certainly don't believe anyone who is publicly giving you a so-called manufactured spend secret. Normally, strategies like that are not talked about publicly. OK, the ones that do get talked about publicly get shut down pretty quick. OK, let's now look at our fifth and final terrible credit card strategy. And that is number five, getting 800 credit score in 30 days. So this is a clip from Sean Kelly's podcast. And Sean Kelly, he is a friend. I've had him on my show before. Great guy. But listen to what one of his guests says about how fast you can build your credit score to 800. How can someone get an 800 credit score? That's actually the easiest thing. Yeah. Easiest thing. Boom. There you go. 800. So in less than 30 days, we teach in Credit Council Elite how to be able to get the 800 FICO score. It's just crazy. There's six boxes that make up the FICO score. And he then goes on to suggest that, yeah, you should fix errors on your credit report, old addresses. And then right at the end of the clip, the only thing he actually mentions for building your credit score to 800 is. A lot of people sleep on this, but authorized users, one of the techniques to finish boosting. OK, authorized user cards are generally something that you get into at the start of your credit building journey, not to finish up the boosting. I love how someone commented it's easy, then tells you absolutely nothing. Got it. And yeah, I mean, maybe he doesn't want to say too much because he wants you to sign up for his course or something. But I had Anthony Davenport, a genuine credit expert on the show a while back, and he does credit building and repair for people like actors and NBA stars who need a high credit score quick. Maybe they just moved to the U.S. and they want to buy a house or they suddenly came into money quickly and they'd never built their credit before. And so this is like the top credit building expert used by movie stars and sports stars. And he's saying that he can do 700 in three months. This guy is saying 800 in one month. And actually, if you guys are interested in Anthony's method, it involves opening four credit cards in 90 days and two of them are authorized user cards. So the authorized user method, it's not false. OK, I think that that guy is just exaggerating grossly what he is talking about. And yeah, if you follow the steps correctly that Anthony teaches to authorized user cards and to secured cards, when you put down security deposits for you should get to 700 in 90 days. There is a little bit more to it than that. It's not just any authorized user card you can open. There are certain ones that are better than others. So do check out the video if you're interested. It looks like this. I will put a link to it on the end screen of this video. Now, I don't want to hate on this guy too much. I'm sure he does have a way to help you build your credit. He does probably provide some value, but I seriously doubt it is 800 in 90 days. All right, guys. So those are five terrible credit card strategies that you should not try. Thanks so much for watching. Do leave your comments below. And a big thank you to the sponsor of today's video, Smart Credit. You can get seven days of their service for just $1 with my link below. Do check it out. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.