Closing old credit cards?

[IDoDis]

It may be helpful to give someone a general idea of where they are, credit-wise, but nothing beats the hard copies to find out if anything is inaccurate, not yours, potentially fraudulent, etc.

There's a difference between a credit report and a credit score. Everyone should view their credit report at least yearly. Many don't know their actual credit score though, because it's not free and requires an additional charge or you have to pay some kind of monthly fee.

The link I referenced above has no strings attached. It gives you a grade for the following areas:

Payment History (35%)
Debt Usage (30%)
Credit Age (15%)
Account Mix (10%)
Inquiries (10%)

It also gives you estimated credit score ranges for FICO, VantageScore, PLUS Score, TransUnion Score and CreditXpert Score.

It tells you how many years of credit history you have (the actual month and year of when you first established credit) , how old your youngest and oldest accounts are, and the average age of all credit accounts. It also tells you how many years of on-time payments you've had and how many late payments past 30 days.


It tells you how many revolving accounts you have, how many mortgages, auto loans, and student loans.

It gives you a percentage for your debt-to-limit ratio, your total in credit card debts at the time you run the report, and how many accounts have a balance on them.

It tells you how many inquiries happened within the last year, how many older inquiries there are, and the date of the last inquiry.

Each section also gives you tips for keeping your score high or how to raise it for each area that you're given a grade on.

I think it's a very useful tool and it was interesting to run and see all of the numbers.

 

[chisnpeke]

Go to http://www.credit.com/ and get your free credit score. There are no fees. This is not a hokey website. It will give you valuable information about your credit score by breaking down each category. It will give you a letter grade (A,B,C etc..) for each area and tell you tips on how to improve that area. One area was longevity of credit which was a pretty high percentage. So DO NOT get rid of your oldest cards.

My overall score was an "A" and each area was an "A" except for one area where I was dinged and given a "C" because I did not have a recent car loan (within the past 10 years). We always pay cash for our cars and keep them a long time. Didn't realize this would hurt my score. Well, that category only counted for 10% of my overall score, and I still had score over 800, so I'm not worried.

I still thought the info was interesting. When DD gets her first car (which will be used), we'll a loan or co-sign for it (she'll be making the car payments) and just pay it off early in say 6 months. That way I'll have a car loan on my credit.

Thanks for the website! It was just as useful as those pesky ones who badger you to pay a monthly fee. Great resource for just brushing up on what is going on with your credit.