BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?

Subject: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 07:13 AM

Two things converged that got me to start this thread. One was the excellent program on 'Frontline' on PBS: "The Secret History of Credit Cards" I think it was called. Then, a member here was bragging about their credit score in another thread.

I don't use credit cards anymore, but do have a VISA check card which directly debits my checking account. I limit my banking transactions to the bare minimum possible to avoid usury fees. I haven't had a car loan in over 10 years. We filed bankruptcy a few years back (like half of all bankruptcies, ours was medical bill related--they say we are all one pay check away from bankruptcy these days), and we've defaulted on student loans. However, we've always stayed current on our monthly bills (rent, electricity, phone, car insurance, prescription drugs, etc).

We have never lived in a "credit score" kind of world. We were in our 40s before we bought anything on credit (one car, and a couple of credit cards with limits of $1000, $2500 & $2500 respectively, and student loans to return to school after my partner was disabled). We've never owned a home, but are looking at buying into our coop apartment building in two years when it is sold, for a retirement home. We have our pension funds through our employers, and we are setting ourselves up to start living with one car once our kids move out.

I don't feel the least bit guilty or ashamed of my negative credit history, or my inability to pay bills. I feel hassled and depressed at times as a result of our finances and lack thereof, but that is because life is a royal pain when ends don't meet. It just doesn't have anything to do with the reality of who we are and what we do. I am not my paycheck, my bankruptcy, my loan defaults, or my credit score. In fact, my motto is, if your only troubles are money troubles, you don't have troubles. There is much worse stuff in life than my money troubles I've seen friends and family suffer, and in that regard, I feel truly blessed with the troubles we've had come our way, like my partner's disability, family members' cancer, friends who lost children to illness, accident, murder...

I am not a conventional, mainstream middle class sort of person yet I work among people who are, who would be appalled to learn of my financial history and my indifferent attitude towards it. Despite my negative credit score, which is meaningless to me, I've lived pretty well, though certainly not as well as the people I know who have wage slaved their lives away, had mortgages and homes, yearly vacations, sent the kids off to college, etc. We've travelled the world, met fascinating folks, done fabulous things, and I don't have many regrets. We learned to live on much less than most folks, and I realize I am still one of the richest people in the world, living in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, despite the fact that we have just earned (in 2004) $50,000 per annum for the first time in our lives.

So, how do the rest of you deal with the usury games and the credit score madness? How does it effect you and the way you live your lives?

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,Rapaire
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 09:13 AM

If you're talking about me, I wasn't bragging, but using a personal anecdote to make a point.

Your point about finally breaking the $50K level in 2004 can be matched by my experience -- I had been working in my profession for damned near 30 years before I reached that point.

As for credit cards, we have used them as tools and have never considered them anything other than borrowed money. We have never, as far as memory serves, used them to purchase necessities (such as food) -- something I see done every time I go to the store and which appalls me.

Having grown up in a single-parent (widowed mother with 4 small kids) household, a household that lived from Social Security survivors' benefit check to Social Security survivors' benefit check, where I saw my mother mortgage the house my father built over and over just "to make ends meet," having seen her work for 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. as a "practical nurse" so that there would be food on the table and she would be home before her kids went to school, I know the value of simple living AND good credit.

My point in the other thread was that while my wife and me have worked to built good credit, the current administration in DC seems hell-bent on ruining that of the Unite State.

No bragging, no boasting, just a comparison.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,Amos
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 10:26 AM

Good credit is a good thing to have, an index of a certain kind of respect and repute; it is not a be-all or end-all but it does go a long way to lubricating the transactions of life.

The surest way NOT to have it is to use credit cards beyond your ability to pay them off. We use several, rotating them, but we never put anything on a credit card that isn't in the bank to pay it, and we deduct it in our checkbook at that time. This takes a it more accounting but it makes for an easier sleep of a night.

I hate debt, and avoid it as much as I can.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 11:47 AM

Sometimes it takes us longer to learn those credit lessons. I'm paying off my credit card this year, starting with a big payment soon when my tax return comes in. No planning to spend that money on something, it is going to pay down debt. I'll pay a couple of bills in an annual lump at the same time to keep my monthly bills a little lower, but no new purchases are on the horizon. And I'll still owe several thousand that I'll whittle down during the year.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 01:06 PM

One credit card which gets paid off as soon as I can pay it. It is at my local financial institution so I am not tied to monthly payoffs but can put money in whenever I am at the bank. Everything else paid off with the exception of a small mortgage 24k on my house. I do not live above my means, which are modest. But an illness could bankrupt me.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 01:14 PM

I loaded up on short term and long term disability insurance when they were offered at work. It doesn't cost much and it can be very helpful.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 01:38 PM

But SRS, first you have to have a job that offers such insurance. Most don't.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 01:39 PM

Any of you read Barbara Ehrenrich's "Nickled and Dimed"?

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,Sooz via the back door
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 01:43 PM

What is the problem with using credit cards? We both use ours in the supermarket for petrol etc and very rarely use cash. The bill is paid automatically and in full from our bank account on the same day each month. We probably spend less that way and we pay no bank charges at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,Rapaire
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 01:51 PM

Sooz, in the US far too many people use credit cards to live WAY beyond their means. They pay the minimum each month, which means that they pay mostly interest and very little on the principle. As a result, they are always deeply in debt.

They use credit to finance their lifestyle, which if they paid cash for they could not afford. It's a very, very vicious cycle.

Even worse, in my opinion, are the "payday check cashing" shops -- these lend you money against your next paycheck, but charge literally usurous interest rates -- in one case I know of the interest amounted to 56% per month!

This is not helping the poor, it's gouging them. And these are the only recourse (all too often) of those with bad credit -- which they got because of credit card debt.

Also, some of our businesses in the US will charge you to pay your bill with them electronically -- even though an electronic funds transfer cost less than processing a check.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,Sooz via the back door
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 01:56 PM

The same happens here in the UK, Rapaire, but is it credit cards fault that some people are not as sensible as they could be? For many of us they are a great way to organise our finances.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,Rapaire
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 02:03 PM

I am in no way blaming the tool for the carpenter's failings, Sooz. Some folks shouldn't be have the tool, that's all. There are alternatives for these folks.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,Teresa, in the side door
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 02:20 PM

I don't blame the tool per se, but I do blame the companies. They count on people not paying the full balance. The guy who came up with this whole idea is an evil genius. :>

I had very good credit until I was a victim of identity theft. I always paid my balance off every month. I think I have a year left on the seven-year "probation" period, and then I'll think real hard before I get another credit card.

Teresa

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,curmudgeon
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 02:35 PM

Jim Hightower's take on credit card companies.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 07:18 PM

In the next few weeks I plan to cancel all of my credit cards (mostly gas cards) and use only a Mastercard. Some of the gas cards aren't even usable in Idaho since the stations aren't here. It will be that much less to keep track of and that much less exposure to possible theft.

I have already cancelled all store cards -- Sears, etc. -- and IF I pay with a credit card I use a bank card (which was actually issued by a credit union).

It's a long, hard battle and it's a fragile ledge you stand on at any time. An illness or accident could easily wipe out years of work, even with insurance.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,bflat
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 10:53 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 11:05 PM

Poor people use credit cards to survive. They buy groceries with credit cards when they run out of money. They pay for their gas with credit cards when they run out of money. They pay their electric bills and their heating bills with credit cards when they run out of money.

They run out of money every month. The only thing that keeps them viable is the minimum monthly payments on revolving credit cards.

So, I asked in my opening post, how many of you saw "The Secret History of Credit Cards" on the PBS Frontline program? How many of you have read Barbara Ehrenrich's "Nickled and Dimed"?

If you are able to pay off your credit cards every month, you don't get what I'm talking about AT ALL. If you have the ability to maintain a near perfect credit score, you don't have a clue what people are struggling with TODAY. NOT 30-40 years ago when you were being raised. The economic world for poor people isn't even remotely close to the same now as it was 30-40 years ago.

For one thing, the "safety net" was yanked out from under them a generation ago.

Funny ain't it, how nobody every talks about homelessness anymore? Nobody ever mentions the word 'poverty' in political conversations anymore?

It's all about what the have a little, want a little mores want: the Ownership Society.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Teresa
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 11:12 PM

My comments earlier on this thread were an oblique reference to that Frontline program.

I don't blame the poor people. Credit cards were never meant for the poor. They are simply another kind of debtor's prison. That is sad.

Then you have the really, really poor, who live paycheck to paycheck and can't afford credit cards, or never could get good credit. Or, if folks choose not to have credit cards, they are scorned. "How are you going to rent a car? How are you going to do anything?"

Er, I do what I can afford to do, out of my good old-fashioned ... um ... bank accounts.

Teresa

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Feb 05 - 11:13 PM

oops! My lawyer said that he had never met anyone with as high a credit score as mine. Truth is I was dumb, ignorant of what he was talking about. I've been a saver since I was a teenager a behavior instilled by my depression age parents. I use credit cards but actually pay as I go when the bill arrives. Do you realize that each succesive credit card you own deminishes your score? I had thousands saved when I married my husband at a very young age (21),he was 22. He lucked out financially and I've brought much more to our collective assets although he earned more than I. Saving and investing and doing without has been something I value. I've done without and I do mean basics just to save. I hope that I will not be a burden to my children, which is my purpose to the effort. And if I leave them with an inheritence then I hope it helps them have a positive credit score. While you can't take it with you it sure helps to have it when you are here.

Ellen

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Kaleea
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 02:24 AM

4 years back, a fellow rear-ended my car & I was permanently injured. After lots of insane medical bills, inablility to work, loss of home, life savings, maxing out credit cards, getting the shaft from the auto insurance company, bankruptcy, being disabled & going on "disability," etc., etc., my credit rating is so low that no one has ever seen a credit rating that low. As a result, I can no longer rent an apartment in my name. They do credit checks just to rent. How does one live without being able to rent a place if one no longer is able to own a home?   Utility companies do credit checks. All this and the accident was not my fault. I have only survived because I am a wily Musician.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Davetnova
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 03:57 AM

I "cancelled" a credit card. Then a story appeared in the newspaper about someone who had cancelled a credit card and sometime later owed a fair bit of money on it. I checked and found that my card has not been cancelled but has been made "inactive". this apparently means that although I can't use it, if any direct debit/standing orders are attached to it, unless the drawer is informed not to to draw it, they will be honoured and your "inactive" card is owing money and paying interest.
Sure enough my exwifes RAC breakdown cover was paid from this "inactive" account. It was pure happenstance that I checked with the CC company.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 04:40 AM

What is the URL for the place for getting free annual credit reports? I tried to Google it, but came on sites that wanted to sell me something before I got my free report.
Has anybody here taken advantage of the new U.S. law and obtained their free credit report?
-Joe Offer-

---

I fond it: www.annualcreditreport.com

It's an involved process, but you'll have your report in less than 15 minutes.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 07:57 AM

Kaleea gets it! Thank you for sharing your heart rending story. It is more than a little daunting, being faced with the prospect of being made homeless due to your credit report, regardless of how well you have done paying rent your whole life isn't it?

Yet that is what many people in the US face when they lose their homes and/or file bankruptcy. Working poor people are punished twice, sometimes three times over if they have medical issues. Once with the initial crisis that puts them over the edge. Twice with reprcussions of the financial aspects of the crisis, like bankruptcy, homelessness, etc. And third, with the fact that they earn too much money to get any help from anyone--and likely can't get medical insurance either.

That has been our family's reality since the 1980s. And there truly is no way out of that debtors prison, no matter how many hours you work, because you will never earn enough to save, much less improve your credit rating.

We punish those who aren't middle class, fully employed, fully insured, and financially solvent their entire adult lives in this nation like no other Western nation does. It is horrific.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: harpgirl
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 08:14 AM

Guest 1105PM, I agree with your assessment. This is exactly how poor people use credit cards. They hate it, too. No safety net, no attention to the poor, who are ever growing. Bush is determined to destroy this countries willingness to protect it's poor along with programs to do so.
He wants government to be about war and corporations, not protecting people. It makes me sick and I am ashamed to be American.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 09:35 AM

GUEST, I have not only read the book you mentioned, I grew up in it, as I noted above. I've delivered newspapers and given the money I made to the family. Both my brother and myself have made and set tombstones and he has dug graves -- both jobs by hand, not by machinery. We've caught fish, not for sport, but for food. We've hunted for the same reason. Both of my brothers and myself worked for the high school -- ever stripped and waxed a gym floor? -- so we could go to a private high school. I saw my mother trapped by debt after my father was killed in a construction accident, and I saw her never get out of it.

And I see it here -- the "transients" who come through town all year, the people at the local homeless shelter, the poorest of the poor Hispanic-Americans and folks from the Rez, all of them doing their damnedest, like my own family, to keep their pride because they have little else.

There is currently NO social safety net. Reagan cut it down, and now I see Bush2 rolling it up and burning it.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Willie-O
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 09:56 AM

One of the peculiar-seeming things about credit cards is that they are all dying to own your debt--so much that they are cut-throat competitive with each other in a way that you can use to your advantage.

Two years ago I had a $7000 CC balance, cause I went back to school for a year and ran out of money halfway through the year (I never claimed to be a financial genius). We have both Visa and Mastercard, and I have found both these institutions have extremely low-interest promotional rates (2-4% annually) which they will extend for the first six months if you transfer a balance from another institution--or just borrow cash. After six months of course the interest rate reverts to the usual 10-20%. So for two years I've been flipping the balance back and forth every six months between the two competing companies. Doesn't seem to bother them.

The only catch is, of course, I want to pay it off, and it's a matter of having the self-discipline to keep paying as much as possible every month on the debt--but at least, whatever I do pay goes mostly to the debt and very little to the interest.

W-O

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 12:18 PM

GUEST your pronouncements of whether thread participants "get it" undercuts the usefulness of the thread. You describe having a job while simultaneously having a low credit rating, yet you imply that others don't truly understand this issue because they have a job and access to good health and disability insurance? Is it your position that to understand this one must have managed to fall through all of those cracks, and not simply have given the matter a great deal of thought and planned accordingly? (Like, for example, having had the insurance pay for the cancer surgery a few years ago, but realizing that there is no way to leave this job for something higher paying because you don't want to have to requalify for health and life insurance or risk that new job not working out and finding yourself hard to employ and insure.)

Rapaire, for several years I have had a low interest commercial credit card, and have (knock wood) only once been gouged by that horrific late fee. I called just this week to inquire about a change on my bill (they used to let what you paid over the minimum count toward the next month's payment, meaning you could have a floating month for no payment, but now that is gone and they want their regular minimum every month). I had them change the due date because they made this change and the old due date was too close to my payday to be able to get paid then pay the bill in time. The old CC company policy allowed me to mail in payments after the due date and not incur late fees. I can see the writing on the wall--they want more late fees. Anyway, I'm planning to pay this off, then switch back to using my credit union credit card. The interest is a bit higher, but I'll be paying it off again every month to avoid the interest payments. They don't waste money with all of the mailings and in exchange for the higher rate they offer points. I bought my Kitchenaid Stand mixer with those points after paying for some house remodeling with the card (and paying it off monthly). Points alone are not a good reason to go with a card--you have to be disciplined to pay the bill off or you're paying for your own stand mixer with those monthly interest payments.

My commercial credit card sends me an average of about five pieces of mail a week, trying to get me to use credit card checks, trying to get me to take out a personal fixed rate loan (to no doubt pay off my card then be able to start charging on it again, while simultaneously paying off their loan). I religiously shred this stuff. Not only do I not want to use it, I don't want someone else pulling it from the trash and using it.

Joe, here is a page with the credit bureau information. It lists several ways to reach the big three. Also, they talked about a strategy for checking your credit on the NPR Motley Fool program recently. Here is a link to a January program. I just listened to it, this isn't the week I had in mind, but you can move through the weeks and listen to the "Fool Phones" bit to get this answer. Note that at the top and bottom of the page you can skip forward or back to listen to other weeks' programs. The program I listened to discussed writing to two of them for your free reports and compare the results, then wait four to six months and write to the third one and see if it still stands up to what you determined from your first examination. Then decide if you're going to repeat 2:1 this comparison, or simply stager your requests through the year and every four months get a new free report.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 02:37 PM

People lose their insurance for no other reason, than they used it. That's right. In many states right now, if you run up bills, especially with catastrophic illness, you can be dropped from your health plan.

Once you've been booted, you will be denied coverage by everyone else. State sponsored high risk pools have huge waiting lists, are very difficult to get accepted into, and state legislatures have the power to cut and otherwise limit your benefits for any reason they feel like it.

People get laid off. Sometimes repeatedly, as I and a number of people I know have in the past 5-10 years. Downsized. Shuffled between full time and part time, and back again. Vicious state budget cuts. That sort of thing. And where do you get money for retraining or more education? Not from the state or the feds, even if you've been disabled and qualify for worker's comp. All those programs have been cut to the bone. Even if you qualify for retraining, the programs are only required to provide you with the bare minimum of training to get you working again--and they can force you to accept low wage positions, just to get you off their insurance roll.

So, even if you are working, you can lose everything very easily, just by virtue of becoming ill or injured.

And SRS, your high falutin' rhetoric doesn't change the fact that you don't get it, just like I don't think Rapaire totally gets it either, regardless of his tough circumstances growing up. The world in the US is a much meaner place now than it was when we were growing up. Much, much meaner.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 02:49 PM

GUEST, you're talking just to hear yourself. SOMETIMES people have those problems you describe, but not always, and you are offering no citations to suggest how often that happens. Your approach is to dismiss evidence and offer generalizations. You just want to make this argument and you're not offering the kind of evidence that convinces me that you want to do anything but argue, using the lowest-common-denominator sense of the word. To quarrel.

I tell you that my insurance worked, but that I take precautions not to lose that insurance because I recognize risk. You tell us "people get laid off" or "people lose their insurance." Well, Duh. Offer some numbers and credible analysis or get off of this soapbox, please. Read up on some of the Rhetorical arguments and (hopefully) see why your way of addressing this issue isn't getting at the heart of the problem you're trying to address.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 03:09 PM

I don't know what my credit score is, but I have a fairly good idea what Shane's is.

It's a negative figure... :-)

The USA is indeed a much leaner, meaner place than it used to be, and so is Canada. It's a general tendency in the World today, since the powers that be are serving not the public, but the dollar. One place I've seen where the powers that be have made a very genuine attempt to serve the public since 1959 is Cuba. The price they have paid for it is to be ostracized, attacked, and blockaded. Not that I'm saying the Cuban system is perfect, it certainly is not. But it has made a genuine attempt to give the whole public literacy, a good education, jobs, free medical care, and a society that is far more egalitarian than just about anywhere else I have been.

Cuba is also leaner than it was...if not meaner. That's because they have lost the financial assistance they once got from the Soviets.

The whole western world is now demolishing people's social services precisely because they DON'T have to worry about competition from the Soviets any longer. Money-driven power now has a virtual monopoly across this planet, and people are suffering bitterly because of it.

We are also facing these social strains because of over-population and diminishing resources worldwide. That tends to make things leaner and meaner.

We need to:

reduce the birthrate
improve universal education
end grinding poverty
increase local autonomy in agriculture, production and marketing
stop mortgaging developing societies to debts they cannot pay off
provide universal health care
provide universal civil rights
provide new non-polluting energy sources

And we need to do it across the whole World, not for the sake of profit but for the sake of sanity! That would require a fundamental wake-up call for a humanity who seem to prefer focusing on minor differences (and fighting over them) rather than on major similarities. Unity is achieved by finding common objectives and ideals, not by zenophobia and nationalistic fervour.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: annamill
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 03:46 PM

Do YOU know what your credit score is?

Unfortunately, YES!

I see it as my own fault though. I used to make a great deal of money. An accountant once old me I was in the top 2 percent. I enjoyed every penny. Great cars, wonderful world trips, starting businesses (which failed), having gatherings ;-), having parties, giving money to friends who needed it, paying for my son's education... oh, I had a good time!

Once I lived the life of a millionaire..
spending my money, now I didn't care..

Now I make very little money and Honey and I are broke, our
score is low and we are trying to rebuild because we would like to
own a house someday. This is hard to say at my age. It's like just starting out.

Funny though, we're happy. Strange. I always was a "quality of life" person without knowing what the hell "quality of life" was.

We're working hard to bring up our incomes and credit, but we take walks on the beach, go whalewatching with a coupon for $12 bucks apiece, just enjoying San Diego weather and mostly, each other, now that I have time to spend time with him.

I wouldn't go back to the 2 percent if I could and that's no lie.

There're things we would like to do and we hope to do them in the future but it doesn't depress us.

In line with the conversation going on here, good credit and money helps to make life a little easier, but to coin a phrase (whatever that means) "Money isn't everything".

Annamill's new motto, "Live gently and Love".

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 03:55 PM

I think that within ten years it won't really matter what people's Credit Scores are. Our world faces some serious problems to do with environment, energy, geopolitics and demographics. IMO, those who have arable land will do much better than those who don't, and people in cities and urban areas will be hit very hard with rising costs. Just thought I would be the voice of doom and gloom. Have a good day everyone.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 07:15 PM

Love your attitude annamill. That is exactly what I've been talking about, when I haven't gone off topic to debate the fault/no fault issues with those judgmental folks with good credit!

We've never had good credit in our lives. Before we got sucked into student loan and medical debts, we never used credit, therefore had a poor credit rating. If you don't use credit, you have a low score. So actually, being truly fiscally responsible and never buying what you don't have money to pay for at the moment you make the purchase, saving money and paying cash for your cars, and paying for everything else as you go makes you a credit loser!

And as one of my sister-in-laws (who has fabulous credit, the million dollar house, etc etc) always says--once it's all said and done, do you think ANYONE is going to remember the time you were behind on the bills, or think less of you because your credit rating sucked? Not if they are loved ones and true friends they won't.

And frankly, no one else's opinion buth theirs matters to me anyway!

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Feb 05 - 07:48 PM

First of all, GUEST, you sound a whole like like me except...

with a couple different twists and turns.

Woody Allen says "Life is a crapshoot" and reading your story brought that to mind. Let me explain.

In 1996 my late wife, Judy, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Luckilly, she worked for Xerox, which had excellent benefits so unlike many companies, she didn't loose her job, which was held open, or her income, which she recieved from the time of the diagnosis until her death some 17 months later. Had she worked for just about any other company in the world, other than Xerox, I would most likely be in your shoes as well with a bankruptcy on my record.

According to Elizabeth Warren in an op-ed piece entitled "Sick and Broke" (Washington Post, 2/9/05) who is also a law professor at Harvard University, 1 million Americans, mostly middle class and probably much like yourself, GUEST, file for bankruptcy ever year as a direct result of a combination of illness, health insurance companies that drop folks when they get sick and loss of income from being sick.

This, in a country that boasts of producing somw 35% of the world's GNP, is criminal and immoral.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Davetnova
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 08:40 AM

I'm appalled to read these stories of bankruptcy caused by ill health. Here in the UK we tend to take health care for granted and grumble about delays, but the cost has always been borne by the government.
I had for some reason always thought that America, with its riches, had something similar.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 09:34 AM

There is no social safety net in the US any more (not that it was all that great to start with). The US seems to have forgotten the word "We" (as in "We the people") and replaced it with "Me."

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 04:48 PM

Here is information, via Microsoft Money, about the free credit reports.

Most major provisions in the sprawling new law, including those much sought-after freebie credit reports, will go into effect across the country over the coming months.

Dec. 1: Western states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming).

March 1, 2005: Midwestern states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) will become eligible.

June 1, 2005: Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas ) will become eligible.

Sept. 1, 2005: Eastern states (Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia), Puerto Rico, and all U.S. territories become eligible.

Until then, unless you live in the handful of states that offer free credit reports, you'll need to pay as much as $9 to take a gander at your credit record.

Internet address: http://www.annualcreditreport.com

Toll-free number: 877-322-8228

Mailing address:
Annual Credit Report Request Service
P.O. Box 105281
Atlanta, GA 30348-5281

As far as gone off topic to debate the fault/no fault issues with those judgmental folks with good credit! GUEST, if you feel that someone is judging you, that's just the big chip on your shoulder blocking a clear reading of the discussion at hand.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 Feb 05 - 11:23 PM

"We have never, as far as memory serves, used them to purchase necessities (such as food) -- something I see done every time I go to the store and which appalls me."

Many people use their credit cards for convenience, for safety (not carrying cash) or for airlines miles, percentages back or other reasons. Half of all credit-card debt is paid off every month. Many people pay on time and pay no interest.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 09:43 AM

I have no problem with people using credit, whether wisely or foolishly. I do have a problem with this nation making people homeless due to bad credit records. I do have a problem with people's financial lives being ruined due to medical illness or injury.

And I have a huge problem with the punitive, cruel middle class standard that judges people with financial problems, the poor, and the working poor as bad people who deserve to suffer. But nowadays, that's the great Republican "compassionate conservative" view of society.

If you don't have money and good credit and a new car and a big mortgage, you are not only a bad person, but you aren't deserving of any help either.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 11:10 AM

If you don't have money and good credit and a new car and a big mortgage, you are not only a bad person, but you aren't deserving of any help either.

Sez who? That defines every young person out there just starting out and I reject any characterization that they are viewed in this way. You're making sweeping generalizations based on your tunnel vision of the issue at hand. There are many free sources of good information out there trying to help people lead comfortable lives by understanding money issues. There are also many large corporations that are actually based on making lives miserable by trying to collect debt. This isn't a governmental or social approach to debt, this is a private corporate view of how to squeeze little people a little harder and grow that bottom line (though by allowing these conditions to exist, it is in effect, government sanctioned). Read this for more on a really pernicious practice.

Finance, like sex, is one of those tangible "somethings" that people can participate in with or without knowledge. And if they haven't had any guidance they can get into a lot of trouble. They can die. Some are profligate and wastrels and users. Others are just naive. I prefer to take a hopeful outlook and say that most mean well and just want to live comfortably but don't understand where "comfort" ends and "excess" begins. Some are in a slow learning curve. As Rapaire says, that "Me" generation is who advertisers market to, and over the years a safety net has never really existed, but now there are more dangerous chasms in the marketplace. The view Americans have of their world is largely one of entitlement because they believe the advertisers and haven't had anyone tell them differently in a way that gets their attention in an equally powerful way in order to cause changes (or from the beginning foster good practices) in their behavior. I think we both agree that it takes a financial disaster to get a lot of people's attention.

Those in this thread who have tried to position themselves in such a way to avoid financial disaster have managed to figure out how to get to that position, or have been very lucky, or have made changes in their fiscal practices to protect their assets.

I went back to the first post to see how much this has drifted from the first discouraged expression regarding credit. The first GUEST (don't know if it is the same one slogging it out through the entire thread) said:

I am not a conventional, mainstream middle class sort of person yet I work among people who are, who would be appalled to learn of my financial history and my indifferent attitude towards it. Despite my negative credit score, which is meaningless to me, I've lived pretty well, though certainly not as well as the people I know who have wage slaved their lives away, had mortgages and homes, yearly vacations, sent the kids off to college, etc. We've travelled the world, met fascinating folks, done fabulous things, and I don't have many regrets.

Has finance been discussed among your coworkers in such a way that you know this to be true? There are mixed signals all through this thread. You discuss individuals who are "wage slaves" and "judgmental" people with insurance and mortgages, in contrast to meritorious but apparently well-managed poverty and low credit ratings as if there is a cause and effect relationship between the two. I dispute that. I won't conjecture how you reached these conclusions, but I think your conclusions are wrong. I also detect the wish that "if they only knew," they might see the error of their ways and would choose to live on the edge of credit-worthiness in order to live lives like yours. So be it. Or so say it.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 11:21 AM

These sorts of financial discussions are pretty much the only ongoing conversation, outside vicious personal gossip about one another, that regularly take place on a daily basis among my middle class, well educated colleagues in the work place. In fact, these conversations are so common, I sincerely doubt they aren't also taking place in nearly all workplaces around the world.

I wonder, SRS, where in your high falutin' "rhetorical" remarks, you find room for people who were born poor, through no fault of their own, and who haven't quite managed to figure it out brilliantly as you and your ilk have? Where beyond contempt, that is.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:20 PM

GUEST, you're in a rut of your own making. You dismiss my opinion and citations as "high falutin'" by applying a spin to my words that has nothing to do with what I actually said or what I think. You seem to be intimidated by the discussion if it gets beyond your position that you're superior to your coworkers. So this really isn't about finance at all, is it?

Pardon me for mistaking what this thread was really about. Feel free to wallow in your own self-pity.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:26 PM

I do believe, you holier-than-thou honky grrrl, that you mistake my comfort with my "station" in life with your insecurity about yours, which is so apparent in your embrace of all the superficialities of middle class superiority like yours.

Like your insistence that we all follow your "rhetorical rules" and "engage in debate" rather than just have an illuminating conversation about an oft-taboo subject.

Not all of us are impressed with your mundane, middle class education dearie.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 01:53 PM

Keep digging.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 02:07 PM

You can count on it.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Amos
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 02:44 PM

Honky grrrrl???Wow!! This am a real catfight!!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 04:31 PM

Amos, you know better than that. This GUEST has offered several logical fallacies in his/her arguments and rather than back down is attacking the messenger. There is no point in furthering the discussion with this person, who is taking everyday non-value-weighted terms and attempting to apply negative connotations and push them onto me. This is a sleight of hand trick to divert attention from their flawed argument. This argument style fits a few specific Mudcatters--and I know you could add to my list. They're bright enough to figure out how to muddy the waters, but they're not bright enough to figure out when to stop, or to understand why the waters they muddied are muddy.

Logical fallacies.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 04:44 PM

LOL! And then she comes back with a link to her favorite logical fallacies page! How long since you've been in college, there SRS? Or are you just intellectually stuck there?

Talk about your ivory tower academic worldviews! Jaysus, SRS, give it a rest, will you? No one came here looking for a refesher course for their long forgotten college rhetoric class. Just because you bought into the rhetoric class shite doesn't mean the rest of us did, anymore than we have to play by your (and your beloved academy's)pathetically small minded win/lose rules of debate. I didn't begin this thread to debate anybody, and I'm not going to get sucked into that silly, immature tactic of yours and your ilk's (tee hee) to try and change a perfectly good conversation into a dry, EurAm style academic "debate" according to your interpretation of translations ou read in college about Cicero's three genres of rhetoric.

Get a friggin' life instead of another academic degree, and maybe you won't feel compelled to reduce every conversation to a boring, one sided academic diatribe.

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 05:09 PM

Oh and SRS, did you forget or conveniently ignore the fact that Plato wasn't so strident about your beloved rhetoric, and referred to a good amount of it as a form of enchantment, and mere flattery--sophistry, in other words.

Exhort or dehort as you wish, SRS. But I know you are here because you felt my original post cast you personally (guilt by association with those of your station, perhaps?) in a less than flattering light. Well, if the shoe fits...

Subject: RE: BS: Do YOU know what your credit score is?
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Feb 05 - 08:02 PM

I think this is the article Bobert was talking about, though this link at Common Dreams says it is from the Miami Herald.

And it doesn't matter whether you are filing bankruptcy because you are sick, or because you've lost your job. You are punished just the same.