[crqflier]

Or maybe the merchants could establish themselves with this method: https://www.billmyparents.com/BillMy...owId=home-flow.

[Seminole]

Originally Posted by 40yroldawakening

Can you explain why, I had 3 cards I didn't use anymore,I had used them before but paid them off and they had like 10k avail. on all 3. I was told it was hurting my credit score buy having them open, cause at any given moment I could charge 10k. I closed them all months ago.

Sure, and all this information I got straight from the CFO of a credit union who has been in the business for 25 years.

Here is how your credit score is computed:

Credit scores can be anywhere from a minimum of 380 to a maximum of 850.

35% of your score is from your credit history, I.E. do you pay the minimum amount on or before the due date. Approximately 290 points go to this alone. If you miss a payment your score goes down tremendously. BUT if you pay on time from then out you will recover 50% of the points lost in 6 months and 90% in 12 months.

30% of your score is made up of your capacity, or how much credit you have available. This is calculated by the amount owed on your cards divided by the amount available to you. Basically this is seeing how much you are leveraged in a sense. The closer the number is to 0 the more points you get, the closer to 1 the less.

15% of your score is made up of how long you have had credit for, I.E. how long you have had a credit card or a line of credit. Approximately 90 points go to this.

10% of your score is made up of what is called your "mix of credit". For instance how many revolving credits (credit lines, credit cards, etc.) you have compared to how many finite credits (mortgage, car loan, installment payments, etc.) you have. The ideal mix is no more than 5 revolving for every 1 finite.

The final 10% of your score is made up of accumulation, or how fast you get credit. The less the better. This area is affected when a bank looks up your credit for a loan, or a car dealership. The more inquiries you have the lower your score. That is why you should really do as much research as possible to make the car buying process as short as possible. You don't want multiple dealers pulling your credit history over 2 or 3 months. This area is worth around 85 points.


So your question about why it is bad to close credit cards is a very simple one to answer. Lets say you are carrying $1000 worth of debt but you have $15,000 available on your cards. The ratio is .06 . Lets say you close out those 3 cards with a combined limit of $10,000. Now you are carrying a debt of $1000 with a limit of $5000 available. The ratio is now .2 .

The system doesn't look at it the way you were told. It doesn't care how much credit is available to you at any given moment. It cares how close you are to exhausting your credit, because statistically people who are close to being or are maxed out are less likely to make payments. So even if you never used those cards, they helped keep the ratio down, not to mention they also helped out in the length of credit category.

Hope that helps and sorry about the

[mrvuml]

Originally Posted by level 1

I don't live from paychech to paycheck.I'm just trying to rally the BML for safety reasons. I'm financially very stable if you may ask. Sorry for posting financially challenge I could have edited it. Why are you getting personal on this?

I got you mixed up with someone else that said they lived paycheck to paycheck. I apologioze for that. However, in your original post, which you've since edited, you did say you were financially challenged. Nevertheless, my sentiment remains. If you are financially challenged a BMW is NOT the best choice and to expect someone else to fund your whims is wrong IMHO. OTOH, if you're financially stable then why would you need someone to provide BML? Look, you can't expect to raise a subject like this and not get some backlash due to the current state of the economy and what caused it.

[elzar]

Originally Posted by e90fanatic

thats a stupid idea. always ALWAYS pay in full. even for financially challenged people. I seriously don't understand others that doesnt pay their CC in full. It's not free money. It like a snow ball...a 1k CC debt turns to 2k in no time

Everybody should pay cash for their cars and houses. Those loans and mortgages aren't free money.

[E90330iS]

interesting

[sepsis]

I swear by no-interest for a year credit cards. if you hustle that system right with balance transfers you can accomplish much!

[level 1]

Originally Posted by mrvuml

I got you mixed up with someone else that said they lived paycheck to paycheck. I apologioze for that. However, in your original post, which you've since edited, you did say you were financially challenged. Nevertheless, my sentiment remains. If you are financially challenged a BMW is NOT the best choice and to expect someone else to fund your whims is wrong IMHO. OTOH, if you're financially stable then why would you need someone to provide BML? Look, you can't expect to raise a subject like this and not get some backlash due to the current state of the economy and what caused it.

Did you read the site. I take care of my finances properly and respectively.
This has nothing to do to the economy. It's the people who analyze and guesstimate the over price stocks.That's why we are in a hole. BML is the same as a CC but you have an options to pay it in full or staggered payments. Is there something wrong with that. Are you a financial/credit manager?Then you should know what i'm talking about.

[John 070]

Has anybody mentioned unsecured debt, which obviously from a creditor's point of view, is a negative thing? People seem to mistake a 25k credit limit on a Visa with a positive, and then wonder why they got turned down for something since they have a 0 balance on the 25k.

What is totally lost in this thread is the notion of income. When it comes to borrowing, the work hard, play hard concept does not work. Ask my coworkers with the 5000+ sq. ft. new homes that they bought 1 1/2 yrs. ago with only 35% or so down.

[sepsis]

5000 sq. ft @ 35% down would be like 250k down in my area lol

[sepsis]

but im definetely with ya in concept john

[Maestro]

Run as far away form Bill Me Later as you can...

I have been doing Interest Free for years, never paid a penny in interest and never ran into a problem until I ran into this Bill Me Later.

Last year I did a purchase from a company which I have been doing business with for over 10 yrs and never had a problem with them. I made a large purchase with them and the SA suggest I sign up with for their Visa Card and get 6 months no payment or interest. So I did it since I have no problem using other peoples money for a period of time.

Well I did what I unusually do, make a monthly payment then pay it off at least a month prior to the 6 month so not to get caught late on the last payment and have to pay all the interest.

I made all my payments online from my bank and all my payment got there at least 5 days before the due date. So I made the last payment 10 day prior to the due date and according to the bank it was paid. Well the last bill shows up 2 days prior to it being due and I see they never got the payment so they claim.

I immediately call my bank and they said the check was issued, I said "check" what do you mean I thought is was Electronic payment and they said normally that is true but this company (Bill me Later) would not accept e-payment they required a check to be cut. I call the number on the statement and get a person who claimed to work for the merchant who I made the purchase from and they were all nice and said no problem just get your bank to send them documentation of the payment being made.

My bank first tried to call them to get some facts and Bill me Later refused to talk to them so I finally got a fax number and send them the documentation and Bill me later said oh not good enough since it was a check I had to show them a canceled check, (well can not do that since bill me later claims they never got the check.)

Needless to say it took me 3 months to clear it up and here is what I found out. "Bill Me Later" is some shell company owned by another company. Bill Me Later contact merchandisers and offers them to issue credit cards or process credit orders for them online or phone orders. They then contract another company to process the orders and bill you and collect the money. They then contract some call center company to setup a call center which acts like they work for the Merchant you just made the purchase from.

So when you try to talk to someone who has any authority they say you can not since the people on the phone do not work for the merchant or Bill me Later, they just answer the phone, they will not even provide you a contact at bill me later. Now if you look up Bill me Later and get their number you get an auto attendant who will not allow you to talk to a human unless you have someone name or extension. I tracked down the CEO and a few others who work there and the auto-attendant did not recognize their names.

The only way I got the issue solved was going back to the original merchant and told them what Bill me Later was doing and got hold of the person who handle all the credit matters at the merchant and they agree it was not right and credited my account with them.

I can also tell this was not an isolated case, I ran into 100s of people who had similar experience with Bill me Later accounts and these were people who claim to be like me but Bill me Later did something that caused them to pay interest. The problem most people ran into was the fact the merchant washed their hands of the whole situation and made people deal with bill me later.

Oh they required all communications with to be written which go to a PO box and they will not accept any calls from any of their so call Bill me Later account holders.

This company is a scam through and through and they know the laws well enough they are just on the edge of being legal. The simple fact they will not accept an e-payment like every other credit card company out there show they they know there is no way to prove they ever got your payment unless you send it certified mail, and even then one person claimed they did that and who ever processes the payment refused the sign for it.

They are also very quick to slam you credit rating when these thing happen.

Beware of this company they will screw you.

[mike-y]

Yikes, that BML sounds like bad news.

I use CC for online purchases because of my card's credit insurance. If I have a problem with a vendor, I just call up my CC company, and they usually take care of it, and can reverse the charge.

And you don't have to have a lot of credit cards to have good credit. You just have to be financially responsible. When BMW ran my credit at the dealer, the SA came back to me and said "congratulations". I asked "what for?" and he said I had one of the highest credit ratings they had ever seen. It was 830. I didn't even know, and I only have one credit card (not even that high of a limit either).

When I got out of college, I *thought* I was making good money and started using credit cards more because I thought I could always just make the payments. That lasted about 3 years or so, until I finally woke up and saw that I had a balance on 3 credit cards, a student loan, and a car payment. Just making the minimum payments left me with hardly anything left at the end of the month. It sucked.

So I contact a financial service and got on their "get-out-of-debt" plan, and stopped using the cards and worked on paying off all that debt. It took about 5 years, but in 2004, I became 100% debt free. During that time, I paid off my car, student loan, and closed all my credit cards as I paid them off, except one. From that point on, if I used it, I paid the balance off each month. I never let a balance roll into the next month. If I want something, I don't buy it unless I have cash money in the bank. Period. No cash = no buy. I've lived that way ever since and have been able to save up more money that I would have ever thought possible, because I don't have any debt.

So when I went to buy the bmw, I went in ready to pay cash. but since they had 0.9% financing on 36 months, and my savings account gets over 3% in interest, I financed about 9k of the purchase (which I can pay off if I want to). I hate having another car payment, but its only $259/month, and I can pay it off tomorrow if I really want to, so I guess I can live with that.

[elzar]

Originally Posted by sf_loft

You must fall into the same "financially challenged" category. There are 2 types of debt, good and bad. A mortgage is good as long as you didn't get sucked into the sub-prime mess and buying too much house. You are building equity even though you are paying interest, how else is the bank going to make money. You also get tax benefits for the property and mortgage interest you pay and get most of it back in tax returns.

You'd guess wrong.

My objection is to those terming credit cards as "bad." There's nothing inherently wrong with credit cards, yet those people who can't think rationally about their debts or responsibly about their usage blame the system instead of themselves. My credit cards have an APR of 5-7% with 1% cash back. If I can use my cash to get a better ROI on some other investment (admittedly not easy in this current financial environment), then why would I pay down the credit cards? Because I don't want those "evil" companies making interest money off me? Debt is debt, some of it has a higher cost than others, and the one that costs the most should be paid first.

And buying property isn't necessarily the best use of your housing dollar. Those tax breaks for mortgage interest usually only offset property taxes, insurance, and water and sewer bills. If values aren't increasing and the only equity you're gaining is the tiny percentage of your mortgage payment for the first few years, you're going to find yourself in a hole if you're not there for the long term.

[level 1]

Originally Posted by Maestro

Run as far away form Bill Me Later as you can...

I have been doing Interest Free for years, never paid a penny in interest and never ran into a problem until I ran into this Bill Me Later.

Last year I did a purchase from a company which I have been doing business with for over 10 yrs and never had a problem with them. I made a large purchase with them and the SA suggest I sign up with for their Visa Card and get 6 months no payment or interest. So I did it since I have no problem using other peoples money for a period of time.

Well I did what I unusually do, make a monthly payment then pay it off at least a month prior to the 6 month so not to get caught late on the last payment and have to pay all the interest.

I made all my payments online from my bank and all my payment got there at least 5 days before the due date. So I made the last payment 10 day prior to the due date and according to the bank it was paid. Well the last bill shows up 2 days prior to it being due and I see they never got the payment so they claim.

I immediately call my bank and they said the check was issued, I said "check" what do you mean I thought is was Electronic payment and they said normally that is true but this company (Bill me Later) would not accept e-payment they required a check to be cut. I call the number on the statement and get a person who claimed to work for the merchant who I made the purchase from and they were all nice and said no problem just get your bank to send them documentation of the payment being made.

My bank first tried to call them to get some facts and Bill me Later refused to talk to them so I finally got a fax number and send them the documentation and Bill me later said oh not good enough since it was a check I had to show them a canceled check, (well can not do that since bill me later claims they never got the check.)

Needless to say it took me 3 months to clear it up and here is what I found out. "Bill Me Later" is some shell company owned by another company. Bill Me Later contact merchandisers and offers them to issue credit cards or process credit orders for them online or phone orders. They then contract another company to process the orders and bill you and collect the money. They then contract some call center company to setup a call center which acts like they work for the Merchant you just made the purchase from.

So when you try to talk to someone who has any authority they say you can not since the people on the phone do not work for the merchant or Bill me Later, they just answer the phone, they will not even provide you a contact at bill me later. Now if you look up Bill me Later and get their number you get an auto attendant who will not allow you to talk to a human unless you have someone name or extension. I tracked down the CEO and a few others who work there and the auto-attendant did not recognize their names.

The only way I got the issue solved was going back to the original merchant and told them what Bill me Later was doing and got hold of the person who handle all the credit matters at the merchant and they agree it was not right and credited my account with them.

I can also tell this was not an isolated case, I ran into 100s of people who had similar experience with Bill me Later accounts and these were people who claim to be like me but Bill me Later did something that caused them to pay interest. The problem most people ran into was the fact the merchant washed their hands of the whole situation and made people deal with bill me later.

Oh they required all communications with to be written which go to a PO box and they will not accept any calls from any of their so call Bill me Later account holders.

This company is a scam through and through and they know the laws well enough they are just on the edge of being legal. The simple fact they will not accept an e-payment like every other credit card company out there show they they know there is no way to prove they ever got your payment unless you send it certified mail, and even then one person claimed they did that and who ever processes the payment refused the sign for it.

They are also very quick to slam you credit rating when these thing happen.

Beware of this company they will screw you.

Maestro,

Sir ,this is why i brought this up. This is what i want to read. So,the big name companies joining the BML are in unison to screw up the borrower. This is very enlightening. Thank you for the honest reply.

[Maestro]

I am glad you found it useful,

BTW not everyone had problems with Bill Me Later, the ones who had no problems paid the bill passed the grace period so they were going to pay interest anyway.

In my case since I was making small payments they probably thought I was going to run past the grace period until I sent in the one last big payment in month 5.