Credit score

Never had any of those experiences that David A describes. Never had anyone try to upsell me because I had a good credit score. No marketing attempts. No money schemes. Nobody tried to push loans on me. Maybe because I was a low-paid civil service slug.

Now in retirement. My credit score has never dipped below 805? (The FICO score is always higher (836) than whatever other score they use.) Debt free. No loans. The credit score remains excellent. grid is full of hot air.

 

Side note to all this. Especially to those of you talking about your exceptional credit scores.

It is now law - The credit bureaus, at your request, must freeze your credit for free. If you have no plans to take out a loan / new credit card, it's probably a good idea do this

It's also not a great idea to talk about your credit score on a forum... . Just saying.

 

Agree, at least keep your social security number to yourself

I've seen an 850 credit scale and a 900 credit scale, and I've seen banks inflate-deflate the actual number, seems rather like a sliding scale.

 

How many credit cards should people have / carry? I keep it very simple. One rewards card where you ger 1.5% cash back on all purchases, everywhere. Redeemable any time, no limits. And one more spare card kept at home, in case the first one is lost / stolen. Thats it. Why do some people need 10 cards? And carry ALL OF THEM in their wallet!

I can basically just carry my driver's license, one credit card, and 20 bucks in my pocket.

 

If they NEED 10 cards, that would be a problem. Most likely they opened an account to get some initial incentive. Once open, closing an account is more of hustle than opening it. Don't need to carry them all the time, but if they are like me, if it's not in my wallet, I forget where I put them. lol

 

Need--want--have. Whatever. Some people go nuts with collecting multiple cards. And then you risk those cards possibly being stolen when coming through the mail.

I travel very lightly. Carry the least amount possible. Getting more cautious in my old age. If I'm robbed or lose my wallet, it's much easier to just call one credit card company and report it.

 

After years of living paycheck to paycheck and unable to build a large enough "in case of emergency fund" to carry us through multiple years, a job loss during a recession forced us into bankruptcy. We were able to dig our way out and everyone except one institution received 100% of what we originally owed them. That one was around $5k and it was their decision not to file a claim when we originally filed in court.

Once we came out of it, we went to our bank, a large national bank not implicated in all of the bank scandals, that had treated us extremely well through the whole ordeal and we asked for help reestablishing our credit. They had a program specifically designed for long-time customers like us. It started with a prepaid credit card that evolved to a regular credit card with a low limit and gradual limit increases as long as we had a positive payment history. It's worked well. Now that we're retired and on pensions and social security we only have two cards. That bank one we carry in case of emergency on our interstate travels and a department store card we use once a year for buying clothes for the kids. We don't buy anything with either card, though, unless the cash is already in the bank to cover the purchase. We come home from any credit card purchase and make an online payment for that amount the same night. We still have fixed mortgage payments but everything else in our lives is cash and carry. Even the cars. We look at our credit report only to make sure our identity and accounts haven't been stolen; the actual credit score isn't all that important at this point.

You haven't seen credit card offers until you come out of a bankruptcy and the banks know you can't file again right away. We were inundated with multiple offers a day and our credit score was poor. Apparently there are a lot of people out there who fall for it or they wouldn't make such offers.

 

I was at 790 for many months. I just could not cross the magic 800 line. Then suddenly I went to 820 although there was nothing changed.

 

I can't prove this since my credit has been frozen for several years and I haven't been through the thaw process......BUT.......if I'm reliably informed it's also free to thaw your credit......and for those who scream in agony every time somebody mentions "Baby Shark" the bureaus now have to allow parents the ability to freeze their child's credit file for free - something that in a fair and just society should be the 'default'.

The reasons why freezing a toddler's credit file is a 'good' thing to do should be obvious but sadly are not.....
At least now the price is right.

 

Once you reach this point -- and the cars are not badly used -- then you are doing quite well, better than most people.

That is another sign of financial independence -- credit scores don't really matter anymore.

This just shows how wildly profitable it is be lend money to groups who are statistically a poor credit risk. The higher interest rates and fees more than cover the higher loss rates. The sooner the predatory lenders can jump back in on the newly bankrupt, the longer they can harvest these fees before the next time possible bankruptcy filing. They don't care that their actions often keep these people in a never ending debt cycle, it just means more profits.

There is significant 'noise' as older information ages out and new information gets posted. And different institutions will be scoring different information subsets (normally, no one place has a complete ledger, just a big and hopefully representative selection of data), so various outlets will provide different scores on the same day.

Don't fuss too much about it. The better your financial stability, the less reason you have to even care about scores.

 

Yes, both freezing and thawing are now free for everyone.

I froze mine at Equifax during their free offer after they were caught on their mass data breach. Then a new state law this spring allowed everyone (not just seniors) to do so at all major credit bureaus, so I did so at then too.

Then new federal law extended this to the whole nation just very recently.

Sharks bit one of my cards again a couple weeks ago, when someone used my best card to pay their monthly Amazon Prime membership. An Amazon security rep did disclose that this person was named Alex, while asking if I had authorized anyone else to use my cards, but gave no additional clues. He then dug through their system and found a second Amazon account scheduled to renew its Prime membership on my same card a few days later.

He disabled both fraudulent accounts, and I cancelled and replaced my card.

Card breach seems to be an annual event now. Phone calls rarely reveal useful information -- to protect the privacy of the thieves -- so I usually can't find where the breach occurred. Exceptions were (1) the Home Depot breach, where intruders broke into the card processing service, and (2) mailbox, where the local USPS completely ignored a vacation hold, the replacement card for the Home Depot incident suffered tardy delivery, and a thief took my misdelivered mail while I was away. (That ended both my traditional unlocked box, and my on-line vacation holds with the USPS.) In other cases, card companies proactively replaced cards before any fraudulent charges reached my account, for security issues they detected themselves but declined to discuss.

 

Newest credit line is seven years old.