#65 and Things That Make Me Feel Like an Adult

(Note: As usual we have been making progress on the list whilst entirely ignoring the blogging process. Apologies. We'll try to get a few more things to get up here in the next few days. And, as always, thanks for reading.)

I don't know about you, but there are certain things that just make me feel like an adult... and I'm not talking about things like my voice getting deeper and all of those physiological changes that you learned about in sex ed, although I'll be stoked if/when I can finally grow a reasonable facsimile of a full beard. (I just realized that I should probably inform you all that I am Nick, because if you thought T was writing this post that last sentence would have seemed very weird) At any rate, I'm talking about when I started liking things that my former child-self would have thought was totally unacceptable (like blue cheese, onions, or having any dressing on my salad that wasn't ranch.... I was a strange child). At any rate, I did something the other day that made me feel that same way: I applied for a credit card.

Now, I know that that may not seem like a particularly big deal to some of you, but I had been putting it off for a long time. You see, I already had a perfectly functional debit card which acted just like a credit card... you could slide it through the card swipe at the supermarket, buy gas with it, open a tab at a bar, what the hell did I need a credit card for? And something about the idea of having "credit" made it seem so scary and grown up, I would have to start  thinking about building a credit score and paying bills on time and understand interest rates and essentially do a bunch of shit that required forethought instead of just flying by the seat of my pants. And I like flying by the seat of my pants. Besides, what if I couldn't handle the responsibility and having a credit card somehow sent me spiraling out of control, until I eventually ended up starring in one of those debt management commercials on late night TV, where the person had like 17 million dollars in credit card bills until they called some cheesy lawyer from Oklahoma who worked everything out for them. Scary, right? So, I gave my middle finger to the credit card industry and stuck to my debit card for the entirety of my collegiate career.... and I ate a lot of ramen sometimes.

But then, after moving back in with the parents roommates and quasi-joining the workforce, it occurred to me.... "Holy shit.... I have absolutely no credit score and I'm assuming at some point in my life I'll probably want to like buy a house, or at least a car. I should probably work on that."

So I bit the bullet, started looking into things, realized that I was definitely going to be getting screwed on interest rates, applied for an Amex, and was declined.....at which point I thought, "F*&K, this all sucks just as much as I thought it would."

At this point in the story, I'm going to veer into a brief tangent/rant, but bear with me. As you may or may not be aware, if you apply for a credit card and are declined, you have the right, by law, to see the credit report that the company pulled (so that you see why you were declined, address any discrepancies, and so forth)... for free.  That is, if you can figure out how to access your free report. Even though I knew that I essentially have no credit history, I figured, since its free, I'll check it out. Amex referred me to the Experian website, but the bastards at Experian don't put anywhere on their website the option of reviewing your free report that has already been pulled, but they will try to trick you into paying 15 bucks for essentially the same thing. So I called the 1-800 number and, after about twenty minutes with their automated phone system, finally managed to come up with a url for that would let me see my free report. It's a part of their website, but is definitely not referenced anywhere on their homepage. In fact, the free report page didn't look anything like the rest of their corporate pay-to-see-your-shit website. Moral of the story: I had a right to see my report; they made me jump through hoops to do it and almost tricked me into paying $15 for something I eventually got for free..... and I now have a burning hatred of them.

Whew, I feel better now that I've got that off my chest..... Now where was I........

Oh yeah, so after being declined and nearly having an aneurysm trying to see my credit report, I had pretty much decided that I was over the whole thing and that it was going to be up to T to check off #65. But I decided to give it one last shot and started looking into getting a Visa from BofA and, I've got to say, their customer service was pretty fantastic. As I was perusing their site, one of those little chat windows popped up asking me if I had any questions that they could answer for me. I normally just ignore those things, but, since I did have a lot of questions, I figured why not. Lo and behold, there are real people on the other end of those chat windows that are actually very helpful. She not only answered my questions about the different options available, but she helped me with questions I had while filling out the application. And, mere minutes later, I had been approved.

For those of you that got tired of my rambling, here are the key points from the last few paragraphs:
-Experian = jerks
-The B of A customer service reps that I talked to gets an A+
-Amex doesn't find me trustworthy, but B of A does.

So here I am: feeling like an adult and holding a little piece of plastic with my name on it.
I think I'll go buy something.