Sorry to hear about your Dad!

 

A credit score is an indicator of how much interest one is paying. The higher the score the more interest you pay.

 

Sorry about your dad, however, congrats on paying your truck off!!

 

x2... know the feeling.

 

I dunno' about that. My credit rating is in the excellent range and I've had no debt for the last 5 years. I do use a credit card, but I don't wait for the bill to arrive to pay it off ... I just transfer funds from checking to my credit card as soon as the most recent charge is visible online (I pay no interest to that card).

 

I don't know if that is true. I have consistently had an excellent credit score (greater than 800) over the years and am not up to my eyeballs in debt. In fact, I have zero debt.

 

Might want to fact check that. Myself as well as many I know have credit scores above 800 and carry zero debt. Myself I don't even have a credit card and haven't carried a note for the past 10 years. Lowest my score has been in that timeframe is 807.

Id say its more about do you pay bills on time and appear to be reliable for a lender.

 

Same happened when I refinanced my house. The old loan got paid off before the new one posted, dropped 50 points. I found that the more supposed "Credit" one has, affects the score. With a bunch of 12-18K limit cards and using less than 10% of that credit, raises the credit score. Pay them all off, and the score goes down. IOW banks want to see some use of the credit. If you have 100K in credit and 0% use of it, your score can go down.

I found a quick way to raise a credit score. get a new card, transfer another card to it, and do this every so often. Gained 47 points overnight doing this. Take advantage of 0% interest as much as possible.

BTW Sorry about your day and super sorry to have to go through what you had to with his wife.

 

Won't be a surprise if next month when it updates again, that the score will go back up some.
Not like I am hot to buy something else on credit anytime soon.
And, I have one basic credit card, and only got that so I could rent a car.

 

Yup. Every time I’ve paid off a debt my credit score drops by 20-40 points.
32 points when I paid off my 2018.

Credit score went back up a little when I bought my 2024, which is still over 800

 

No loan to pay off, here's the cash give me my title. Lenders will get nothing from me and like it! Paid the new construction house off also in 11 years boom!

 

That is simply not true. My mortgage is at 2.1%. When I financed my Super Duty it was at 1.9%. My credit score has not dropped below 825 in over 20 years. The most I ever see it move is 4 or 5 points - like when I bought the Super Duty. I put roughly $2,500 - $4,000 per month on my AMEX card. I pay it off every month - no balance is ever carried forward. Between that, and never being late with a payment, I believe that is why my score is so high (currently 840).

Credit is a tool. Too bad most schools in the USA don't teach anything about proper use of it.

 

Yeah, I don't get it ..... I have been debt FREE for two decades ........ bought my new Super duty in January - paid cash ..... bought a new Lexus in June - paid cash My current credit score is 794 and I've NEVER seen 800 LOL I guess it really doesn't matter

 

As others have said, not true.
We've been debt free for almost 15 years and our current credit score is 830.
We bought the new 24 Lariat SD in April with cash and our score went from 825 to the current 830
We do have 2 credit cards that we use (for cash rewards) but they are paid within days of use.

 

If you paid cash for a sale, the credit companies would have no record of the purchase. Paying cash for any purchase has zero effect on credit scores. The credit bureaus only get their information from banks when a loan is given, or a credit card is issued, or a loan is applied for. If you withdrew $80K from a bank, that would not be reported to a CB since it is a money transaction and not a credit transaction. Things that affect credit are number of hard inquiries for credit, number of credit cards, amount of credit on cards, percentage of credit used on cards, and financial loans with a fixed payment amount. If you have a credit card with a high limit, use it every month and pay it off, or leave a small balance, it increases the score, while having 10 credit cards and using 30% of the available credit will hurt your score. Banks WANT to see a mortgage or vehicle payment with good standings on a credit check, and depending on how many and payment history can go to getting a low interest rate, while credit checks that have no loans, no balances, and few credit cards that are always paid my not issue their lowest loans even if the score is 840. They figure its a temp loan and will get paid off before any money can be made.

I believe that everyone starts out at the top of the credit score and as life progresses, they eventually go down. Those who have very few credit cards, if any and have not taken out any loans may see very high scores, while those who took out loans and credit cards, paid them all off and have not applied for new loans or credit may not see the scores go up for quite some time. Only scores that go up and down are active credit accounts.