Celebrities talk about credit cards

- advertisement -

SPOTLIGHT

Some of the nation's most prolific authors show their real-people side by sharing their credit card experiences.

Credit cards & you

Celebrities:

Celebrity Q&A


Who: Nicholas Sparks

Notable: Best-selling author ("The Notebook," "Message in a Bottle")

Fame & Fortune Q&A: Bankrate: You often write about epic risks. How did you manage to go $30,000 in credit card debt? Nicholas Sparks: It was totally bizarre. You start with a little idea. I was manufacturing knee and elbow braces for sale to medical offices, which then had to be different from things you could pick up at Big 5 Sporting Goods. So I came up with something I thought was very different, and we tried to make a go at it. It just cost some money to get everything going. You had design things, you had to pay your bills. You just sunk into debt. We had four or five cards and it built up over maybe a year. We held the max for, at most, six months. We got pretty poor, strapped to (paying) the minimums. At that time (1994), I wrote a book with (Olympic gold medalist) Billy Mills called "Wokini." The check from that pretty much blanked the debt out.

Lesson learned: Using credit cards to finance a business venture can be risky. Not everyone can pen a successful book to cover the accumulated debt.

<< Previous

Do you have a secret to success with credit cards?
Or, are you struggling? Share your story.

-- Posted: Feb. 20, 2007

index | previous article | next article

	•	Overview: Credit cards
	•	Take action
	•	Spotlight
		- Robert Manning - Susan Keating - Celebrities & credit - Diana DeGarmo

	•	Poll: America's credit habits
	•	Tools & resources