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Credit Card Debt & FICO & Everything Else

June 21st, 2007 at 02:49 pm

I guess it didn't hit me until the money got deposited into my bank, but well, I officially have credit card debt. Woohoo. LOL.

I have been noticing a lot of new bloggers too - welcome! & they are probably like what the heck is wrong with this person - happy to be in debt? Of course never really been in debt before it doesn't scare me that much. I can understand the whole not wanting to go down that road again - for ANY reason.

For me I am just making money. This will be the least profitable balance transfer as it is small and had a small fee. Was my little experiment. I will write an article on the experience eventually, when it is done I guess.

Anyway, so I will have to update my net worth schedule and constantly explain why I have credit card debt - but that's fine. I don't really consider it debt since you know the money will just sit in the bank. But how it goes.

I will probably wait another month and then do the big $10k BT for dh - that is where the real money will be. His is 9 months and I am hoping by then I will have $10k on my other card to transfer.

We also got $75 gift cards (cc rewards) in the mail - Target. I was hoping to get them before the kids' birthdays, then unsure. But they arrived FAST! IT was actually a $50 card & a $25 card. Dh had a $5 off laundry detergent at Target if you buy $20 worth (lord knows how much that is - a few boxes? LOL - he just switched to the powder stuff which is much cheaper). So he will load up on that and granola bars (big coupons) and whatever else he sees. The $50 will probably go to birthday party stuff - gifts/decorations, I don't know... I have another $50 coming I believe - but maybe not in time.

Dh also bought me some pepsi yesterday on sale with a raincheck from before and he said he wasn't sure if it was worth it - he had LM and it took forever I guess - some new guy didn't know how to ring it up and had to try 3 times (& keep calling the manager for help). He tried to tell my dh that the CRV for 3 pepsis was $1.50 the first time. LOL. But once he got it through was 1/2 off regular price. That one he stopped by Walgreens on the way from picking up BM. Sometimes pop over there with the big coupons because it is not out of the way.

BM was sick Monday so he is going to preschool Friday instead. I just remembered as well that there is no preschool next week so I signed him up for swimming lessons (like $15 through parks and recs - I don't know but really cheap - for 5 days). OF course that was before work was crazy. We'll see. I told dh we should go the first day (he'll probably need help with LM) but if we don't make it every day, not like we shelled out big bucks or anything. I am thinking every other day is probably about my limit but we'll see. It's just at the wading pool - hopefully LM can splash around out of the way while the big kids learn, I could be unneeded. I am sick of being too busy with work to do these kinds of things though - usually doesn't matter.

I finally got the kids' E-vite out for their birthday party - phew. It will be low key this year. I asked no presents. The kids just don't need anything. They got a zillion presents for Christmas we haven't even got through and I mentioned Grandma took them clothes shopping 10 times while we were gone. I can't even ask for clothes. Dh's sister asked for a list and dh was telling me all this crap he was going to tell her. I said, seriously, tell her the kids need Winter clothes! They have so much excess but come Fall BM will have nothing to wear if he grows any more. That is what I would really like. The family will get the kids too much anyway so I just don't want anyone else to bring gifts. They will, but at least they won't feel bad going cheap. & one of my neighbors does the same so I know she will respect my no gift request!

The kids will get too many presents anyway, and we always like to do something nice for them. So they will be fine. I decided no gifts, no party favors, keep it simple. I'll probably make a box cake and we'll do some take & bake pizzas, and I really don't expect to spend much money at all. Recycling last year's theme and we already have most everything we need. IT's 4 & 2 - they won't remember a thing. This is the first year we had the preschool conundrum but I am not going to invite 10 kids I don't know. We invited just 1. Which is my friend and would have invited them anyway. Preschool will have a little party for him. This age we mostly do the family thing. Invited a handful of the kids' friends, but don't expect many to show on the holiday weekend.

I don't think I have sent out a real party invitation since the year 2000. I just LOVE evite - like the best thing since sliced bread - LOL.

In other news my credit score really dropped. Wow. I think mostly it had to do with closing my old card (erased the first 10 years of credit history - which was basically a dinky card I paid every month). It didn't bother me because we have so much history now and my credit score was so high. But wow, I was a little surprised. All I know is score was in the high 700s when we last refied or bought this house - one of those times we got a free credit report and score. Then we bought our last car and financed through the dealer for 1 month and a few months later we were house shopping. My mortgage broker friend pre-approved us and told me my credit score was 820. I was rather proud of this and figured the car really bumped us up (since we usually don't carry much credit. Our score is something like 90% mortgage really). But anyway, WAMU tells you your credit score whenever they grab it too and so I logged in the other day and saw I had a score of 750. Whoa!!!!! Still good, but trying to put my finger on it. I expect overall that it will rise as I pay off this balance transfer. The score was after I took out the card but before I did the transfer. So we'll see how it changes accordingly. I am not sure how often they will update it. I am only borrowing around $5k out of my $30k or so available credit so I don't expect the balance transfer to really affect it negatively, but the whole FICO thing is greek to me all the same. We'll see... Dh is borrowing a lot more but I am not sure he has ever cancelled a credit card. LOL. So hopefully his score is still high - he's just not as interested and though I pull up his credit report from time to time I don't know if we have seen his score since he hasn't been working - they only pulled my score for the car and for the mortgage.

In conclusion, I say it is true what they say about erasing too much credit history, but when you have a good solid few years history remaining and a really good score, you can afford to close your old cards to avoid fees. I don't regret it a bit. Just wonder if I will get back to 800 anytime soon. A more perfect score may not buy me anything but it means more room for error. Which is why this whole BT thing didn't bother me, but we'll see how it goes.

Oh yeah, well beyond the closed card I also forgot I opened 2 bank accounts, 2 credit cards (more recent for the BTs), a few brokerage accounts, etc. in the last year. I think I have been having a lot of hard credit pulls which probably doesn't help in the least. Well, going forward I expect things to settle down.

ETA: Just got first statement and WAMU is only charging 2% minimum payment. I thought the standard was 4% so I may make much more money than I realized - woohoo.

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