If they’re not giving HELOC with that much equity available then she’s probably out of luck when it comes to financing that kind of a project at a reasonable interest rate. In any case, she would probably be lucky to find a contractor to do anything over the next 6 to 8 months. Everybody seems to be booked solid. (At least around me in NH.)
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Check Third Federal, they have the best HELOC rates still- although they recently went from Prime-1 to -.25.
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Anyone have any experience with teachers and student loan forgiveness? My wife is finishing year 5 as an elementary teacher in a low income school. I’m pretty sure she can get $5,000 forgiven but this shit is a little confusing.
Just got my first credit card and I purely want to use it to improve my credit score. The woman at my credit union said to stay around 30% use but the internet says even going that high could hurt my score. Anyone have any ideas?
I always thought the standard advice was to use it often and always pay off the balance in full every month.
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30% seems high to me but I’m not a credit nerd who obsesses over this stuff. Mine is usually around 5%, I pay my cards off monthly and I’ve kept a high score doing that
So are there any exceptions/gotchas to the extension of the deadline to enroll in COBRA while we are still under a national emergency for COVID?
I’m trying to figure out why I wouldn’t just self-insure until a situation arose where it would make sense to have my insurance back, and then sign up for COBRA (if I haven’t gotten insurance through another job) since it is retroactive once you enroll.
Keep it as low as possible and creditkarma says keep it under 30% for sure.
I’m no expert, but if you only have one card, I would imagine your credit utilization is going to swing wildly based on where you are on your monthly payment cycle.
Ensuring you pay off every month, in full, likely has a much greater impact on score since you’re building the history. And maybe at a later point you can get another card that you don’t even use, just to increase your limit and lower your utilization.
Using a credit card to buy stuff and pay it off every month doesn’t demonstrate the ability to use credit responsibly according to credit card companies. In the past, doing this sort of thing used to hurt your credit score and didn’t really do anything to give you a reliable credit history. They want people to ‘manage’ their credit not use it as 28 days of free money. If you want to do that, just get an American Express where after a period of time you can get nearly 45 days of free money minus the annual fee.
Getting installment loans for things like cars and mortgages is very good for establishing creditworthiness because they build in how you’re using your credit. Student loans didn’t help at all back in the day. Lots of credit cards with low usage and high credit limits is the ideal standard of how credit bureaus want to see you as the number on the page. Adding cars and mortgages makes it even better for them.
Yeah, I’ve heard this, also. I thought the cc companies had changed things recently (in the past several years?), such that using a card and paying it off was a positive, rather than a negative. Regularly checking your score is also supposed to be neutral now, whereas it was negative in times past.
My wife and put about $4K on a cc per month for the 2% cash back, and pay it off every month. We also have a track record going back many years of paying utilities, etc. We both have good scores (800+) but I couldn’t swear that the cc use is helping that. I imagine the history of paying all other bills on time is the real driver of our credit scores, but tabbaker was asking specifically about cc.
We used to not be able to see our credit score at all, so it was a big mystery until maybe 15 years ago. I don’t know how that kind of usage is treated today, but it might be considered not a bad thing since the 2008 crash. It used to be a giant red flag to credit card companies if you put groceries on a credit card and now they beg you to do it for cash back.
My guess as to your particular usage is that $4k is a lot to pay off every month. They’re trying to set your credit up as good in the hopes you’ll accept other offers of credit cards. My general usage of credit cards these days is leveraging 0% offers and paying them off right as they expire. Sometimes things come up, so you deal with some credit usage. It looks like some of these companies have gotten wise to what I’m doing and I haven’t been offered any kind of balance transfers in a long time on a card I have a huge amount of unused credit on that I would love to leverage even with the balance transfer fee.
Any revolving line of credit with a payment status of current and no past missed payments is a positive on your credit score. Additionally, the longer you’ve had the card the better.
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Credit scores are a complete joke and something that infuriates me because it artificially keeps tens of millions of people from getting ahead financially.
First of all, something like half of all credit reports have an error. Guess what percentage of these “errors” are in favor of the consumer. None, ever. Second, some massive percentage of collections, which absolutely crush your score, are unpaid medical bills. Often people don’t even know they have these, and in many other cases the people have insurance and paid their deductible but are being balance billed and either don’t have the money or understandably refuse to pay. Another infuriating part of it is that when people pay collections, the collection stays on their report and their credit is still wrecked. Finally, it really stresses people out to constantly get calls from debt collectors who demean, bully and threaten them into paying when they shouldn’t do it. Not to mention they lose everyone’s data and consumers get a $10 voucher. It is all so disgusting.
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The only credit I’ve ever had is credit cards. No car loan, no mortgage, no nothing. All I have ever done is use it and then pay off in full each month. My credit score is in the “you’ll get the best terms” category, and pretty much always has been.
For the teacher 5 year forgiveness there are a number of qualifications that have to be satisfied that are pretty clearly laid out Here.
That being said, if she’s looking to get all of her loans forgiven via PSLF she would have to make an additional 120 qualifying payments. So if she’s got a ton more loans and you’ve already been making qualifying payments (which generally are payments under an income-based repayment plan while working at a public/nonprofit organization on federally backed loans) towards PSLF you may want to consider sticking with that plan instead of submitting for TFLP.
Also, the DOE has said that monthly payments up until 1/1/21 don’t need to be made but payments you would have made qualify for PSLF (I don’t remember if they qualify for TFLP).
Now actually getting the DOE to approve any submissions for forgiveness is a whole other barrel of fun. There’s been stories of applicationse being denied because someone signed their name on the printed line too far or used two different color pens or didn’t write the date legibly enough. I think it might have gone up but something like <1% of applications were being approved.
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How old are you?
It is a gross system. But until we are able to change it, it’s best to understand how it works and use it to your best advantage. (And it really sucks that a lot of people are in no position to do that.)
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I think he’s right about this, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a good reason to carry a balance with interest. Seems more expensive than it’s worth. I have probably ~7 credit cards, but I basically only use one and pay it off each month. I have a few others that were for promotions when buying furniture, my Amazon card cause they give more cashback on purchases on Amazon, and I think one or two old ones I still have but haven’t used in a while. They sit in a drawer. I should occasionally use them to make sure the accounts don’t get closed to hurt my score.
I had student loans, they were paid off, and I had car payments, but paid them off with my insurance money when I totaled my car and bought the new one in cash. My credit score is still 785-800 consistently.
The main thing hurting me is the average age of my credit accounts being low, because I opened a few in the last year to take advantage of promotions. Not having a car payment is also considered a negative by the agencies. I find that one funny, because it seems like being able to afford a car in cash should be a positive.
IMO the best balance between improving your credit and managing your finances well is to get a few cards, pay them off each month, and make sure to never miss a payment. I’ve got automatic minimum payments set up just in case I forget, and everything for me is due between the 1st and 3rd, which is ideal - I pay it all on the 31st or 1st.
Mine has one, it’s not in my favor, and I thought I had it fixed a few years ago and (my bad) never followed up to confirm.
Does anyone know if it hurts your score to close a recently opened credit card? Like if I signed up for something last year because they had some great promotion, paid it off, and don’t use it, will it hurt me to cancel it? Because keeping it open pulls down the average age of my credit.