As soon as Josué Henriquez turned 18, he applied for a credit card. He wanted to start building his credit so he could one day finance the purchase of a car or home.
“I was told it was the only way I could start my credit in this country,” he says, having relocated to the US from El Salvador as a child.
His credit card limit was low at just $500, with a requirement to keep $250 in a savings account to use it. But over the next decade, as more offers rolled in, both his credit limits and balances ratcheted up. Henriquez’s credit card debt ballooned to over $25,000, and he eventually sought out a debt relief company for help.
“I had five credit cards at the time. Now I only have two,” he tells me. The rest were shut down in the relief process. Now 33, the San Francisco resident needed nearly four years to get his credit card debt down to zero.
Many of us are headed in the opposite direction.
In August, the Federal…
