Commercial Bank and Checking Accounts

Good news, you can. But without detailed information about your particular situation, the best advice I can provide is that you can apply at various banks (local or on line) until you find one that will open a checking account for you. While one bank turned me down due to my credit, another took a chance on me, they simply said they would "keep an eye on it" for a while to make sure it stays in good standing.

However, there are alternatives to checking accounts. A reload able credit card, like that from wal-mart (greendot). Those cards provide direct deposit for receiving your paychecks and allow you to pay bills on line and so on, but don't give you checks like an actual checking account. I have a checking account, but I don't use checks, so in the future I might close my checking account. And of course, Reload able Credit cards don't require a credit check.

Also, about credit cards, there are credit cards for people with bad credit:

Unsecured

At $200 to $300 starting out, with a large activation fee already applied to the card when you receive it (even with bad credit, still depends on credit approval though).

Secured card

No credit check needed, where you make a deposit that establishes collateral to protect the bank that provides the card. It might be a pain to save money to open a secured card, but there are advantages. One being that even with very very poor credit, you can still get a secured card, and you can get the credit limit you want, provided you saved enough money for the deposit.

But even with bad credit-credit cards, there are good cards and better cards, when it comes to minimum payment and interest rates. I'm improving my credit too, and my first credit card is one for people with bad credit. Its going well but soon I'll close this one since I found a better one. The first card I opened has an interest rate of 19.9% and minimum payment of $50, 3% if balance is larger than $50, or the full balance if the balance is smaller that $50. My second card has an interest rate of 14.9% with a minimum payment of $10, and etc. So the second card works for me.

But how do Credit cards help you?

Sure, its its good to have a Credit card to establish or rebuild your credit, but credit cards, or even paying of a loan will not help your credit as much as making an unbreakable rule for yourself that you will always pay your bills on time or early. And in reality, if you look at it closely, you really only have two options: paying a bill early or paying a bill late. Because of where your paydays fall in a month. Go with less money earlier in a month to pay off bills or even a month-and-a-half early, so that in the rest of the month you can enjoy being bill-free. Maybe plan to spend that bill-free money on something big you've wanted. Reward yourself for good financial practices.

Buy in bulk

When I say "buy in bulk," I don't mean just literally. I mean it as a philosophy. When you have more money for buying, you have more of an opportunity to buy smartly. For example, lets say you have a credit card that has a limit at or below your monthly income. And at the 1st of each month, you paid all your bills in one shot with the card, then used your card to buy gas, pay for groceries, etc. But, you limited yourself to the minimum you needed, trying to keep below your monthly income as much as possible. Then at the end of the month, you paid the full balance of your card, and the remaining money you have goes to your savings account. Then if the balance of your card exceeded the amount of money you were allowing yourself, the remaining small amount can be carried over to the next month, or to the soonest you could pay for it. A safety net. This is the best use of a credit card. And once you watch your bills and expenses, like a hawk, you'll be in more control of your financial destiny.

Good Credit isn't the way to getting rich, but simply the beginning of the path to financial independence.

I mentioned saving. Using a credit card can help you manage your expenses and make it easier to save. Saving is good, but its not the holy grail in getting rich either. here's why: right now, you can open a savings account with a high interest rate, of around 3% to 4%. Also there are CD's: special accounts where you deposit anywhere from $500 to tens of thousands of dollars into an account that you can't touch for a set amount of time (months to years) that will grow at a high interest rate. So it is smart to save, but what is even smarter than saving is buying and selling. Many will suggest buying real estate, but you don't have to start with something that expensive, you could start with buying and selling rare coins or fixing up broken or old bicycles, same thing with motorcycles, cars, etc. The reason buying and selling is smarter than saving is that even if you bought something at $100 and sold it for $120 (making $20 profit) that is equal to 1,000 to 2,000 percent interest on a savings or CD account. That's money making money. That is what the rich do. They make money just like the rest of us, but they do it at an extremely accelerated rate compared to what you and I do. And they have so much money that they make money by lending to others.

In fact, many of them actually buy "notes," which are like paying to take the place of someone receiving repayment of a loan. For example, Person (A) loans $2,000 dollars to person (B). You are person (C) and you buy the note for that loan from person (A), so now person (B) is making payments to you to repay the loan, but you buy the note for less than the amount of what is still owed, so you make money. Person (A) doesn't get all his money back, but he gets most of it back right now (when you bought the note from him).

Lastly, when you are very rich, money has a very different dynamic compared to how money works for the rest of us. The very rich person may never spend all their money in their life, and in fact may be slowly losing their money, but they have so much money tied up in things like lending money to others, rental property, high interest rate accounts, that they are in reality, living on a kind of fixed, maybe declining income, so they are sustained for the duration of their life, but that fixed income is so large that they get whatever they want.

I hope this helps, and good luck in all that you do in life,

-Johnnie