Coach's Update

Congratulations on debt-free living.

Now start saving for retirement (or your next car).

Next time your wife points out a wussy looking guy, just tell her "Yes, you're right.", heave a sigh and add "He was pretty cute." Then turn to your wife and give her an evil grin.

It's more fun when you're confident in your decision and you can expose other peoples' insecurities.

 

Well, she'll be the first to know if you're "compensating" with your next car choice .

Congrats on paying off the house, that is quite an accomplishment. I hope that you get the car that you want and that she respects your decision when you get it.

Ursle, please realize that Coach comes from an area that has a known "hostility" towards the Prius and its drivers (confirmed by Coach 81 and other from the Louisiana area). His wife's attitude is the pervasive one in that area. It is much different in the Bay Area and likely in all the cosmopolitan areas of the US.

 

This is completely unacceptable and I might add, UnAmerican! Do you realize the devastation this could do to our economy and the blame you've subject yourself and your family too? :nofear:
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Seriously that's SWEET! Milk that frontier for all it's worth. I rarely buy new and keep my vehicles for an average 10 years.

 

Coach - big congrats on paying down the house debt. That's huge, and I'm sure it comes as a big relief.

We went debt free several years ago (paid off two mortgages in one year), and hope to save tens of thousands over the next couple decades by not paying interest on anything. What got us to do that was the lousy situation with predatory lending attempting to score up real estate from simple payment mistakes, or outright fraud. That, coupled with interest rates on saved monies dipping well below a half a percentage point. The saved funds were more well spent eliminating the possibility of an evil bank taking away a house for their own greed.

Saved from that somewhat real possibility, we shifted would-be mortgage funds towards buying a new car, and freeing up remaining kept income to put back into the same (possibly evil) banks in our own names.

That all said, when it was time to buy the new Prius in '09, one of those evil banks denied us a car loan due to declining credit scores, because we hadn't been paying down anything for a while. No good deed goes unpunished.

 

It's a common misconception that a credit score reflects a persons "trustworthiness". A credit score is designed to reflect the "profitability" of a person to the financial industry. For example, paying off a loan early is much worse to the bank than paying for the full duration. When I paid my mortgage off early I thought it would be a big plus to the credit score. Wrong. I had (legally) robbed the bank of a huge amount of money....no credit for this guy....or you.

 

And I've had a long standing argument with the wife about paying credit cards on time and in full every month. We have almost always done that. I keep mentioning that this practice downgrades the score. I don't know if it is really true, but I think that paying most of the amount due one month and some the second month (and do this once per year) will add points to one's credit score. Correct or not correct?

 

I hadn't thought of this issue before, but obviously, banks are in the business of making money, so they want to loan to people who will pay the bank the most money. Someone who does not pay is the worst. But someone who pays lots of interest is better than someone who pays only a little.

I never borrow money so I never pay any interest, so perhaps I have a lower score than someone who has a lot of debt but always pays. But I don't care what my score is, because I never borrow. I suppose if they think you have too much debt your score will drop because they'll be worried you might be unable to pay and will default.

 

That practice does nothing to your score. Up or Down. I've checked.

You can get a free report once a year (if you do it yourself and don't invoke a service or company to do it for you). So do that and you will see what makes it go up and down over your life.

 

Actually you can get a free report once a year from EACH of the three services. So you can get a free report three times a year.

 

Just for giggles, I requested my credit report from Equifax. Not surprisingly, it is pretty empty, since I never borrow money, and the balance on my credit card is just the present month's balance, which I pay off every month.

Two items seemed worthy of comment:

1. It does not show my credit score. They want 8 bucks to show me that.

2. Under the heading "Alert(s)," it says:

"File Blocked For Promotional Purposes
File Blocked For Promotional Purposes"

I have no idea what that refers to.

 

Daniel
It means they aren't supposed to release your data to companies doing promotional fishing expeditions looking for new card customers. Did you check off a privacy option when applying for your card?

 

I also don't care what my score is, anymore. At one time I did care, but moved beyond that before we gained any meaningful legal ability to see our own credit records. I have periodically reviewed the basic (and brief) record for accuracy, but have never checked the score on anyone's scale.

The link between creditworthiness and insurance costs remains murky.

Those reports don't provide credit scores, FICO or otherwise. They provide only the underlying credit records.

"my credit score" is meaningless without knowing which scale it is on. Different service providers use different proprietary scales, covering different numeric spans.

The best known scale is the FICO score. But if someone lists or provides a score that doesn't say FICO, then it isn't a FICO score. Some of the competing scales are inflated compared to FICO numbers, i.e. a number that is fantastic on the FICO scale may be merely mediocre on the actual (possibly unnamed) scale provided. This is great for bragging rights, but won't fool any lender.

xs650 already answered this. My reports are similarly marked.

 

I was just curious about my score. If it had said something like 850 out of a possible 1,000 that would have had some meaning to me. ... Anyway, nobody has applied for or used credit in my name.

 

I've enjoyed following your story over the year (s?), but so far I'm right, you've not bought a Prius and I thought a while back you wouldn't get the PHV when it came out, either. House pay off is a better use of your money anyway, though! Eventually you will probably get a Prius.

 

Yeah, and again I'd rather a paid off house than a PHV Like getting a huge raise.