@Anonymous
Well I would say that a lot of the good credit unions suggested on this board do have requirements, but they are not credit score based requirements, and can usually be achieved by paying a small fee to join a group or charity.
@Anonymous wrote:
@rmduhon wrote:
@Anonymous You can pay off the used car loan early, just make sure you have another installment loan to take the place of it.That's one of the things I find so frustrating about the whole credit score idea - if you are not currently in debt, you ger dinged so you must be perpetually in debt. When I owed almost $100,000 on a mortgage and another $30,000 several credit cards I was a member of the high 700s club. Now that I have no debt, two houses free and clear, a car and an RV free and clear, $50,000 cash in several bank and investment accounts and $1500 more in income each month than I need, I can't even get into the 600s club. It seems a mid 6-figure Net Worth is more of a liability than an asset. My college Accounting professors are spinning in their graves. With all that going against me, I can almost see why the FICO algorithm would assume I have no plans to make a debt payment next month - I have no debt to pay.
Well, the problem is that no credit score algorithms account for assets or income. They score you based on your ability to manage credit (utilization and on time payments mostly). If you have "NO" debt then there is nothing for these algorithms to base their scores off of your profile. Though you don't need to accumulate a lot of debt. You can easily use a credit card and pay in full each month to avoid being in debt or accruing interest, and as has been suggested to you, you can set up a $500 secured loan and pay $400 or more off right away which would leave you with a very small amount of debt over the next 5 years. You don't have to owe on a house or a car and have a lot of debt to have good scores, but you need to have a small installment loan and at least one reporting credit card each month.At the same time, if you are against having a small amount of debt, then you are not going to be seeking credit from lenders anyways, so at the end of the day your score doesn't much matter anyways.
