Quote:
Originally Posted by
mickeycrimm
When I started in gambling I had zero credit. I got a $500 prepaid credit card that reported to the credit agencies. That is key. You have to have a card that reports to the credit agencies. You can find them online.
It was no problem to max the card out every month with just regular expenses. I paid the entire balance off every month. Everyone says the credit companies don't like that. But what are you going to do, pay it off $35 a month on $500 balance? You can't build credit like that. It would take forever.
I think it was about 7 months later Discover sent me an unsolicited offer for a $2500 limit credit card. I could run a bigger balance on that card and pay it off every month.
By about a year later I was getting multiple offers every month. I got two more cards. They all kept raising their limits without my asking.
IIRC, it took about two years for my credit score to creep up to the high 700's. It's sat around 780 to 790 ever since.
It won't go higher because I won't make installment payments. You get the higher scores because they get to soak you for massive interest. I use the cards to make life easier but never get soaked for interest.
I sometimes listen to Dave Ramsey, the personal investment adviser with a syndicated radio show, while driving. Dave's first advice to every client is to destroy your credit cards and use debit cards. He doesn't like the interest the credit companies charge. And he says that even if you pay the balance off every month that sooner or later you will mess up and sink yourself into debt. He thinks credit ratings are for suckers.
I've never bought a vehicle on credit, so I was told my rating cap was probably the 810 from last month. But it went up a couple points this month, so that was (slightly) incorrect.
The point of Todd having a copy on file isn't to prove an upside, but to neutralize some of the braggadocio when a person has a demonstrably lousy rating and hasn't paid bills over a comprehensive length of time, which is what credit ratings are.
I introduced this topic because several of the brilliant posters here, like MaxPen for example, took shots at me for not paying tax bills until November the following year. So I thought that if MaxPen is going to use a tax bill as evidence of something, why not go all the way and cut to the chase and use a comprehensive rating? Payment of ALL the bills, for years, now that might mean something.
Of course, if I recall correctly, MaxPen didn't volunteer any credit rating. Hmmmmmmm.
Credit ratings are ubiquitous. You can't evade being evaluated via your credit rating. Even if you claim to have used bankruptcy as a wealth tool while living in RVs and parking on your kids' properties to avoid hook-up fees. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
