My parents had bought stock in my name when I was a wee baby . When I was 21 , they sold the stocks and gave me the money . It wasn ' t a HUGE amount of money , but it was actually quite a nice little egg , that I eventually spent all away over 4 years . If I ' d just socked it into some kind of investment account for 15 years , I ' d have a larger egg today . But I was 21 and dumb . Also got a credit card , ended up working a job where my expenses were more than my salary my ex and I were living together at the time so he was a fucking champ and took on most of the expenses like rent and food , would put Xmoney into the card on payday , three weeks later , I had to take Ymoney out of the card . Didn ' t go out , didn ' t buy new clothes , wasn ' t smoking or drinking . Literally was using the money for food and petrol and medical insurance and a cheap cellphone plan . Finally got a better paying job , paid that fucker off , and now if I even owe 10 % on my card I pay it off immediately . PRO TIP if the bank wants to offer you a stupidly high credit limit , don ' t take it . Just don ' t . My limit was not high , thankfully , but apparently my credit is so good they want to offer me roughly R 200 000 worth of debt . Nope !