Personal Finance Advice

This week’s lecture was about credit reports, credit reporting bureaus, identity theft, and collection agencies. Quite a scattering of topics. The first part of the class was on credit scores and credit bureaus. Dave makes the point that a FICO score is an, “I love debt score” because the only way to get a FICO [...]

Most people seem to have a lot of false beliefs about being debt free. They seem to think that those of us who are debt free never have to worry about money, or that we are somehow free from the concerns of everyday life. Some people work to become debt free because they believe that [...]

I married a man just like me. He had no debt going into our marriage and no desire to incur any. This has made it very easy for us to create a financial life together that we both agree on and enjoy. I know many other couples who are not so lucky and this has [...]

I knew it was bound to happen, but I’d been hoping that somehow I’d avoid it. Despite having excellent credit and no debt, we got a letter from one of our credit card companies dropping our limit from $10,000 to $300. This was done because of “inactivity” on our account, which really translates into the [...]

I know that many people believe that you have to have debt in order to have a high credit score. Many people keep their debt just so they can keep their score up (so they can get more credit later). They fret every time a credit card is closed or the available limit is lowered. [...]

It takes my neighbor hours to pay all her bills while being debt free keeps me from that onerous chore, saving me valuable time. The same neighbor taught me about another time saving aspect of being debt free. This neighbor requested her free credit report from AnnualCreditReport. I had mentioned it to her some time [...]

Last week, Sadie wrote about how debt free living means not being a slave to a FICO score. In the article, she pointed out that FICO has become such an integral part of our lives that even the debt free can’t ignore the score completely, which is annoying, at best. But I’ve been giving it [...]

One of the benefits of a life without debt is (some) freedom from the gods at FICO. Because I don’t do debt, my FICO score is not as important to me as it is to some and that takes a lot of worry out of my life. I see many people freaking out about their [...]

We are under constant media barrage about checking our credit report and we all know it’s important to have a high credit score. With the new legislation, it’s possible that a great credit score will be more important than ever. But does the average Joe really understand what goes into the calculating of a credit [...]