Two Interesting Credit Card Reports

I came across two interesting posts regarding credit cards in the past two days and wanted to pass them along. The first is regarding credit score calculations (FICO Score). As you probably know, this score determines many things:

• How much interest you might pay on large loans (mortgage, auto, boat)
• Your credit worthiness as seen by other agencies
• Prices for auto/homeowner insurance

The first article explains what types of activities impact your FICO score and looks at some common mistakes. These mistakes include:

• Canceling old credit cards
• Staying current on “most” of your cards
• Having too many open lines of credit

The second article provides 50 Fun Facts About Credit Cards (credit cards and fun? Paying interest on borrowed money is not my idea of fun ;) and contains both good information for credit card users and some interesting trivia. Here are a couple very important points from the article:

• If you have multiple balances with different interest rates on one card, payments are generally applied to the balance with the lower interest rate. You will have no choice in the matter and you cannot request it be made to the higher balance. So if you have a $100 balance at 19.99% and a $5,000 balance at 4.99%, your payments apply to the $5,000 at 4.99% first. A note about this will be in your agreement.

• Each American household receives approximately 6 offers a month. The typical response rate is .33% (one third of one percent). You can opt out of these mailings via OptOutPrescreen. [plus, this reduces junk mail, prevents bad guys from getting the offer and submitting it]

Since it's the start of the new year, it might be a good time to commit to closer management of your credit information, including a review of your current credit report.

Comments

[credit card merchant account]

now i know.

[credit card analyzer]

My friend and i both applied for a home loan at the same time. We've been having credit cards since university years and never missed payments. But i was denied in my application for the loan because of my credit score. Now i know why else it can drop. Thanks for the information.

[master casuncad]

nice tips, but too late for me i guess because i will soon have the credit card that i applied for.

at least i have the option to not activate it at once and i get the second chance of thinking first if i would like and settle for the terms of the bank.

thanks for the tips.