My dad paid off his mortgage and owned his vehicles outright. He had been that way for about 10 or 12 years when he tried to buy a small cabin. Even though his finances said he could buy it outright, he tried to get a small mortgage....the banks REFUSED to give him a mortgage. They said he basically didn't have a credit history. Its all made up bull excrement that screws with peoples lives for the fun of it.
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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heh heh I am at the point where my mortgage is paid and I have no CC debt. I have some savings and retirement accounts. But I cannot rely on this since we have the Trump Tariff Taxes. So I suppose I cannot retire this year as I hoped. I have to save more. My dh is 3 years younger than me and really wants retirement... he is a construction union guy so I tell him to make an appointment w/their funds person and we can design a plan. I will likely continue working part time for the next 6 or 7 years to cover healthcare unless the Democrats pull their heads out of their asses.
make an appointment w/their funds person and we can design a plan
"Do you have two million dollars?"
"No."
"Plan to go back to work."
Yeah cuz a credit score measures how good you are at being a credit customer, not how good you are at money.
You don't need to loan money to get a credit rating, that is a total myth.
The credit rating is based on assets and income, debt actually has very little effect on it, only if you declare bankruptcy does it usually change the rating.
A person with a mortgage will always have a much better credit rating than the same person without a mortgage, not because they have a debt, but because the house is an asset.
House insurance on a mortgage is there to protect the lender, not the homeowner. Its quite likely that paid off mortgage policy holders make more claims than mortgage owners and that would affect the risk rating.
And is irrelevant to the text above? They said their insurance went up not that their credit score changed.
Wanna take a guess at one of the factors in how much you pay for insurance premiums in most US states?
For people with poor credit, buying a house can be challenging — and expensive. Once you find a lender that’s willing to offer you a mortgage, you’ll probably have a higher interest rate than someone with good credit. And you could also pay significantly more for homeowners insurance.
A NerdWallet rate analysis found that a person with good credit would pay $2,110 per year for homeowners insurance, on average. But in most states, someone with poor credit would see an average premium of $3,620 per year — over 71% more.
The post title directly references credit scores. Its pretty relevant to respond to.
Its crazy, the only debt I've held is student loan debt and I have paid the bill every single month. Otherwise I use checks and a debit card, I had money to buy a used car upfront.
Went to get a credit card. My credit score is below 700, and I was deemed "unqualified" because, get this, I don't have a history of paying off debt, because I have not held enough debt to prove I can pay it off.
My credit rating is so bad that I had to have my brother co-sign a lease for me fifteen years ago. The landlord told him his credit rating was the highest he's ever seen. My brother (and his wife) were in debt up to their eyeballs - over $100K in credit card debt and a mortgage they were deeply underwater on. They're still in bad shape financially; meanwhile I now own my own home outright (having paid cash for a fixer-upper after saving up for a few decades). I still have shitty credit and it's not affecting me negatively in any way.
Just dealt with this. I didn't even exist in the credit system. I've even been told if I had BAD credit I would qualify for something.
Eventually I did get connected to a small local credit union and got a pretty good deal on interest as a 'first time buyer's program.
I use a rewards card to pay for things like service calls/repaires (latest was $650 for a AC repair) I pay it off over a couple months. I could have paid it right away but the rewards give me free protein and gas and that is something these days. I do it in halves to spread it out and leave me extra liquid cash I can withdraw if I need it. I am considering holding about 500 or double that in small bills in case the financial system shits the bed for a few weeks in winter due to the tariffs and economy. Right now, nothing makes sense irt to the markets so I think it is all vibes and denial happening.
Now they want you to pay a secure credit card the privilege of having you as a customer, always with a high annual fee and absurd interest rate, and then after a couple years of bleeding maybe they'll give you actual credit. Meh. If you're above 620 you should qualify for FHA first time buyer's loan, which is honestly one of the few ways to not get fucked right now. We're going to do (housing crisis) indefinitely so even shit property goes up.
Yeah, it's dumb, but you should be using a credit card for all your purchases and paying it off every month. I do this, and my credit score is over 800. Make sure you get a card that has cash back rewards so you can get paid for having to do this. Just be extra sure to budget it accordingly and not go into debt.
been playing their game a long time. basically add up credit limit on all your cards. divide by usage %. on time payments and years with good credit, net worth, are factors too. i don't know their equation. sitting about 820 with no debt and 7 lightly used cards. used to play balance transfer until they quit offering incentives. 10k until finally paid down. always pay down principle as fast as you can. saves years of payments/interest. https://www.investopedia.com/ has lots of good reading. think they also sell stuff so.
The real death of America is everyone drowning to death in made up fees.
No kidding! Way back in the 80s I had a US Bank account called "The Only Account". It was a checking and savings account where checking always had a balance of zero. When I wrote a check or withdrew money from an ATM, they automatically transferred money from savings to checking to cover it, and that was that. No overdrafts. Ever. There was an annual fee of I think $20/year.
I don't know where that idea went, but banks and even credit unions now act like they never heard of such a concept. "Overdraft protection" consists of loaning you the money, no matter how much you have right there in your savings acct, and they charge a fee each time and of course start charging interest on the loan. Ridiculous.
My credit union has this. That feature has kicked in for me a few times for me just this year.
You didn't explain what would happen if your checking account had a $0.00 balance and your savings account had a $0.00 balance.
Seriously can someone tell me what happens? Because money keeps coming out of my savings...
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fun fact, credit score is not a thing in most of the world.
Is credit score in the US the same as social score in China but you are owned by your billionaire instead of the party?
fun fact, neither is the social credit they complained that china had, but the western credit score is basically a social credit that punish people for not consuming beyond their means.
You can raise it well without going beyond your means, but then it's a slow and annoying racket.
hard disagree.
a perfectly responsible person would only buy things he can afford. his credit score would be non existent.
you only get it if you have debts, if you finish paying your debts the score goes down, so you have to consume to maintain it.
also, a perfect score isn't ideal. lenders are more interested in loaning to people who will fail some payments, as that means higher interest and more profit.
so you are punished by not overconsuming, and you are punished if you consume and are perfectly responsible.
I've made it to what is typically classified as an "excellent" score with practically no debt and have paid no interest all while spending within my means. Here's how I did it.
I have several credit cards that I keep paid off every month. I almost always buy things with store promotion credit (no fees or interest), which is typically another credit card or small loan, and pay it off within the promotional period. I do this with purchases I need to make anyway, like a washing machine, and not on anything frivolous.
I paid all expenses for a nice vacation recently with new travel cards. I could have paid out of pocket, but now I can pay it off slowly with 18 months interest free and get the points.
I do drag these payments out a little during the promotional periods because while I can pay outright I do like keeping cash reserves for emergencies. That probably does help.
The only loan I have ever had was a very very small student loan. Paid that immediately after covid loan pauses ended. I did recieve a credit hit of about -20, but in 3ish months I was above where I started. I've noticed everytime I pay off any large credit it takes an immediate hit, but always grows higher in a few months.
So far I've not been denied on any credit I've accessed and typically get good terms, so I'm not sure how true it is that I'll be denied for having a good score. But I am just barely at that "excellent" score.
Now the downside and credit to your point is this took a very long time. If I bought a ton of things I could barely afford and just barely made payments, maybe even missed a few, my score would have grown so much faster. Paying on an irresponsible loan for 5 years is considered "better" than me paying my credit card off every month.
Imo that's the racket, people that spend irresponsibly grow their score much faster. It does indeed promote overconsumption.
But it is still possible to grow a good credit score with slow incremental work. It's unfair and a bad system. I'd rather not have to do any of this, but it's possible.
what you described is a fucking nightmare of a system. so painfully convoluted and unfair, and the only one who wins is the shareholders because of all the consumption.
Pretty much yeah, but until my fellow citizens wake the fuck up I still gotta access the system to live unfortunately
China social credit started out as something like a credit score where you would get beneficial services/rates with a better score from lenders such as Sesame Credit.
The government took that and applied it to many spheres of the society in a pilot program. I don't know how it is today since I haven't looked into that since 2019.
So when you have some car insurers, for example, that offer to put a gps device in your car in exchange for better rates, this is how the social credit system started through private companies.
And didnt exist until 1989 in the US. Credit scores and Tay Tay are the same age.
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And for anyone in the US, just know that State Farm is one of the worst companies for Homeowners Insurance. They will pay the bare minimum. All insurance sucks, but State Farm is on a whole other level of suck. If you are with State Farm don't make the mistake I made and quickly find another company.
Seriously, leave State Farm. By not leaving I am now paying $20k that they should have covered.
I have had trial lawyers tell me that State Farm is a pain to deal with even when claims get serious enough to involve them.
I have been using Allstate for a long time, and to their credit they have been good about approving my claims and paying fair amounts.
In the 2010s I had a totaled car one year, then another year I had two homeowners claims: a moderate one to get new siding after damage from some insane winds, then a bigass claim that ended up replacing plumbing and flooring while we ran up months of hotel bills they paid.
I’m not going to delude myself into thinking they’re a good company or give a shit, but my personal experience has been consistently decent.
I don't have state farm but get their offers in the mail all the time. I have a different agency that has covered our home and autos since 1998. That said, when we removed our pool I called to see if we could get a downward adjustment on our home insurance since... we not only removed the pool, we also had a 4.5 foot chainlink fence surrounding our property. They laughed at me.
just know that State Farm is one of the worst companies for ~~Homeowners~~ Insurance.
I wouldn't get any state farm insurance. We had to sue to get the very coverage outlined in the policy for uninsured/underinsured driver coverage.
Just the worst.
Remember Katrina?
Like a grim reaper state farm is there
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Anecdotally I haven’t found this to be true. I’ve had mortgages, car loans, etc and times in between without debt. Credit score never really wavered more than 10-15 points.
"You can't make this up"
-Someone who wants you to take them at their word for an outrageous claim while providing no supporting evidence whatsoever
What are you talking about? Its not outrageous at all. There's countless stories of exactly this happening and yes others have provided proof some even have videos about it im sure.
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