I have to say that this past decade has been full of ups and downs. However, I’m glad that with those downs it limited the amount of credit that lenders extended to me. For instance, at the end of 1999 and early 2000, I made a bunch of really bad financial choices. These bad choices negatively affected my credit. My bad credit limited the amount of credit that was offered to me. So with this past decade’s housing boom (and bust) and easy credit terms, these things just weren’t available to me to mess up even more. And, it gave me time to really learn why it’s important to have good credit, how to get good credit, and how to keep my credit in good standing.

My bad choices in the long run were really silver linings in a sense. I know many people, younger than me, who were extended a lot of credit through credit cards over these past 10 years. They maxed out their credit cards at a whopping $29,000 and are now in a lot of trouble. The most credit I was ever extended, right before I completely dug myself into a hole, was $5,000. Before 2000, most credit card lenders were more cautious with their credit limits. These limits were thrown to the wind sometime in early 2001/2002 at the start of the housing boom. Everyone thought they could use their homes as ATM’s and pay off their massive credit card debt. Why not? Their home value would increase exponentially forever, right?

Wrong. I remember in 2003, a friend of ours had just gotten a dream job as a mortgage broker. Handing out ARM’s to people with sketchy credit made her a fortune (sadly she lost most of it right before the bust.) At the time, she said that because there were people like her to hand out loans to just about anyone, home values would never go down. Her managers saw no end to the housing boom. My husband and I were just flabbergasted that homes could possible continue on their upward movement. In 2005, a small fixer-upper was going for $525,000, we just couldn’t see why anyone would pay that much or more for such a place. We just didn’t believe what we were hearing.

Thankfully we didn’t buy into that trap. There was a moment where our mortgage broker friend tried to convince us to buy property on a 5/1 ARM loan. She really believed that home values would remain constant or go up. It’s not like we were predictors of the future, we just couldn’t figure out how to pay for a half-million dollar property. The skyrocketing values just didn’t make sense, and I’m one for common sense (most of the time.)

This decade of minimal credit made me pay for things in cash. The small credit card bills that we had 15 months ago have all been paid off. Our last remaining debt (besides a student and car loan) is a line of credit. With hard work, crunching the numbers, and determination I should be able to tackle it within 18 months.

What things did you learn this past decade? Are there anythings that you would change? What would you do differently?