What is your current FICO/credit score?
What is your current FICO/credit score?
Mine is 667. I have never used credit cards, and I don't have any debt. My partner, whose FICO score is 780, currently has about twice their annual salary in debt.
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Dunno, dont care. If I dont have the cash on hand, I cant afford it. Fuck banks.
I understand why some people have this opinion, but I don't feel this is proper advice without a caveat. My brother lived this way for a long time because he had poor financial discipline. It helped him most to just not play the game.
I've not payed a cent in interest for 20 years, while I have gotten hundreds of dollars in rewards for paying for things I've just had to pay for anyway. The best bet was my BOA Better Balance Card (RIP, you were too good for this world!) It paid $25 cash every quarter if you made more than the minimum payment every month. I put my internet bill on autopay on that card and nothing else. (It was a backup for the handful of places that don't accept Discover, my preferred card.) By paying that bill I had to pay every month anyway, I got a free $100 per year, and probably had that card maybe 10 years. So if you want to see people fuck banks over, they paid me and I never paid them. They didn't care because they got the merchant fees. That was too good to last, but Discover still gives good cash rewards and I've only ever had stellar customer service with them. Again, hundreds in rewards over the years at no cost to me.
Both cards used to offer free extended warranties too, which I've used to fix my bass amp once and I bought TVs and other more expensive things on those cards for the free warranty extension. Discover has dropped that, but my new BOA card has brought it back.
Yep. There is a psychological affect to paying with cash instead of a credit card. Some people need that to control their spending while others don't.
The credit score largely revolves around that.
I was mostly raised by 2 sets of Depression Era grandparents, so I don't even buy half the stuff I need even though I have the money these days, let alone stuff I want. 😅 What a valuable lost resource. My parents were generally very thrifty too, though my dad has since grown out of that and buys all kinds of useless crap nowadays as "investments."
Control is absolutely key to credit though. My brother racked up almost 30k in his 20s and now my house is half paid off and he still rents a 1 bedroom even though he probably makes the same money roughly as I do. I feel a bit bad for him, but people's habits are what they are.
That's a little short sighted. There is no way I would be able to accumulate the cash necessary to buy a house without a mortgage. I refinanced my mortgage down to 3.25%. So my house appreciates in value and inflation eats away at the cost of the mortgage. It's by far the best financial decision I've ever made.
Even if you can't afford something, emergencies can come up where one might need to spend money they don't yet have. Battery dies in your car and now you can't get to work? Need to buy a battery ASAP or else you miss work. Put the battery on the credit card and pay it off ASAP.
I have no love for banks, but if you're savvy you can leverage credit cards in your favor over the years.