That's what I thought too. But then bought a house. haha. Paid mine off in '07 and still on stock turbo. Sucks. But hopefully that will change this winter.

 

Yeah every time i get rid of a bill the math NEVER works out the way it ought to. That money ends up going some other place i had been neglecting.

 

It's too bad shops dont offer 0% interest for 6, 12, 18, etc. months like furniture stores, appliance stores, heck....even Lowe's. I would buy everything right now if I got 12 months 0%. I guess they just arent big enough. Although some of these mom 'n' pop appliance stores do it because they get the money right away from the credit card company and that company is who is really financing the stuff. So really, shops would have nothing to lose other than maybe some contract fees which could be passed on to the consumer.

 

+1 That would be sweet, then I could get the B the day it was released!!

 

why dont you just apply for a 0% interest credit card?

 

Do you know how many of us would be in more debt......LOL. Too easy to go fast. Have to give over your first born

 

Well that is what you do when you get 0% interest through a store. I didnt know you could just get a 0% credit card and buy anything though. I only try to have one credit card at a time, through my local bank, with the exception of when I make major purchases like furniture, a frig, etc. Then as soon as I pay off the furniture, etc., I call and close the card out because if you have too much available credit it hurts your score. But yeah, you may be onto something here. Looks like Citi has a platinum card that is 0% for 12 months. I'll probably do that here in early '11.

 

Opening and closing accounts frequently is worse for your score than having a lot of available credit.

 

I dont know if that is true. I think it is worse to have a lot of open credit from everything I have read. And from my experience. I ran my report before I bought my house and realized I had like 2 credit cards I thought were closed. Called and closed them and then when the bank ran my score it was up 30 points the next month.

 

Read this........

http://biz.yahoo.com/pfg/e35score/art021.html

Particularly the bullets for reducing your debt-to-credit ratio and saving your credit history.

 

So by your logic if you have one credit card with a balance of $2k and a limit of $2500 one way to raise your credit score is to go out and sign up for 10 new credit cards and not charge anything on them so that your debt-to-credit ratio decreases? I don't buy that. When my credit score dropped this summer (my bank provides the FICO score and reason(s) for fluctuations) the reason was that I was applying for an increased amount of credit. Ie: furniture, etc. for the house. Another thing it says is, "Therefore it’s a big mistake is to cancel a credit card you no longer use. When you cancel the card you wipe out all that history." Anyone who has ever ran a credit report knows this is not true. It does not "wipe out" anything. I still had a Capital One card on my report from when I was 18-20 years old I totally forgot about. Plus we got into this quite a bit when I was getting my MBA...

This is so off topic though. I am sorry I brought it up. Maybe we should just drop it and have the mods delete the last half page of BS.

 

Fine by me. Your example is ridiculous and wrong. Fundamentally Orman is correct. Initially your credit score is going to go down when you apply for more credit. You have to have it, use it correctly, and then keep it for an extended period of time to improve your score. Not in 10 accounts, but a few that you build upon. You are simply a liability with little/no available credit, and will never have an excellent credit rating without it.

 

My example is completely in line with that bullet point under the link you posted. I just don't see how it can be a good idea to have several credit cards open. Which is why I cancel them after I am done with them. But whatever. I like my method, my FICO score is over 800, and I am not going to change.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5152010_impr...dit-score.html

Now how about this BBK-B, huh?

 

Uhhh, No. Directly from that same link........

"Get the mix right. While you don’t need 10 cards, lenders nevertheless also like to see that you can handle multiple credit lines simultaneously. An example of what they would consider a responsible array of personal debt would be a credit card or two, one department store card, and an “installment” loan such as student loan debt or a car loan. The idea here is that you want to show ‘em you are responsible enough to juggle a few different types of debt. It‘s a bit ironic, but the one thing that makes lenders absolutely nuts is if you have no cards or loans; they then have no way of gauging whether you will be a good customer."

P.S. Do you really think that "lifeengineer" knows more about personal finance than Suze Orman?

Agreed about that last part though, BBK-B folks!

 

Maybe we are talking about the same thing here and it is not coming across correctly because it is online. Yes you want to establish credit. But what I said in my op which prompted you to react is that when I pay off a major purchase, like from a furniture store, I cancel that card. You do NOT want credit out there that is inactive. The quote you just posted even touches on this. Debt and available credit are two different things and maybe that is where you and I got hung up. Think of this. If you were loaning money to someone would you want to loan it to someone who in the blink of an eye could go out and rack up $20k in debt or $2k in debt? Which poses more risk? I agree with you that establishing credit increases your score but what I am saying is having inactive credit cards not only does not help you, but shows you pose more risk. And as for my example, yes it was ridiculous but mathmatically it is true. If you increase one number the ratio goes up, if the other it goes down. Now in reality we both know that wont help your credit but according to that link you posted they only make the case for a simple linear equation and I was simply pointing that out. Do you have a degree in business or are you just going off of some website stuff? Not knocking or implying, just simply asking.