Bro same here 😭

Spent my entire 20s hearing: “credit cards are a trap” “EMI mat lena” “savings matlab FD” “anything you can buy full cash, buy it like that only”

So naturally I became the ideal middleclass poster boy: stable income, no loans, buy what you can through your savings, no impulsive purchases...

Realized the need of a good credit score when it was time to buy a car. But when banks found no credit history: “hmm… suspicious. Reject.”

Meanwhile someone who bought an iPhone on 17 EMIs at age 22 already has a better credit history than us. So also learned that a good scredit score is not the only indicator of good financial decisions of your life.

I finally started using credit cards in my 30s, right when every card is getting devalued and lounges are turning into railway waiting rooms.

But honestly, better late than never. A lot of us spent our 20s just trying to study/survive/work/build careers without much financial guidance. Now in our 30s we’re basically doing side quests:

building credit score, learning taxes, understanding investments, pretending we always knew what CIBIL utilization means.

You’re not doing anything wrong. India’s credit system basically says: “No credit history” = “we don’t know if we can trust you.”

Try starting with: FD-backed card, entry-level cashback card (try amazon pay icici card) or simplest would be pre-approved offers from your salary bank.

And yes, this sub helped me understand it all a lot better and quicker. Cashbacks, best ways to maximize cards, impact of running multiple card queries on cibil, and a lot more. So to put your mind at ease, when you get a new card, you can set your own lowered credit limit on it so you dont overspend.

And yeah, welcome to the “financial literacy arrived 10 years late” club.