cashnocredit

I went over my CL by 10k a few years ago as an experiment. FICO dropped around 70+ points. It was a non-event. Went back up to within 10 points after the next cycle and fully recovered the cycle after that. I doubt it has any negative effect other than it shows you can charge a lot and pay it. Most underwriters will see that as a good thing.

Hell, I had an Amex in 1974, closed in the early 80s. Opened a new one in 2011 but they didn't backdate me then. Had no record of it (which was always paid on time) and actually recycled my account number to someone else in the late 90's. IIRC, when I first started pulling credit reports in 2009, a 10 y/o closed good Amex account was on either TU or EQ but dropped off the next time I pulled my reports. Sadly, it wasn't on EX which was the only CRA creditors had pulled at that point and I only had baddies on it. It was my only positive and it wasn't even mine.

If you've ever fallen for the old 'puppy dog eyes' trick, don't feel bad. A new study has found dogs evolved new facial muscles specifically to tug at your heartstrings over the course of thousands of years of domestication. No, this isn't some junk story from some British rag. It's sourced from the NAS! https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/17/dogs-developed-muscles-make-puppy-dog-eyes-humans-study-finds/1483681001/ https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/06/11/1820653116

This was the older FICO from about 5 years ago. One card with a balance was optimal and there were small drops as the number with balances increased but when all of them had small balances it dropped like a stone. So when the new Walmart account reported (with only $800 CL-lol My other cards were all 10K or more), and it had zero balance, there was a strong pop up which overcame the new account penalty. That showed up later when I zeroed out most of the balances. It was only a few points IIRC. Also, the newer FICO score is much less sensitive to having all the cards reported balances. I see FICOs now drop only about 10 points from 810 to 800 or so with small balances on all accounts. OTOH, my accounts are a lot older. I no longer prepay balances as the differences are not material and I'm not really into the optimize FICO thingy anymore. It's good enough.

Still no hard pulls so I caved and went to the email status link. Approved, 12k. Curious as to whether they soft pulled or just used the data they already had from ARs on my MC. Sort of a yawner but adequate. Especially since I don't work (retired). And don't think I've ever spent more than 5K in a month at Costco. Usually more like 1k to 2k. But sometimes I splurge. So it's an extra 1%. The negative is that I now have 2 Citi cards. Otherwise I have only one card at each issuer. On the positive side, it fills out my cards. Visa was the only type I didn't have zero foreign exchange on. And I do spend enough at Costco to make it useful. My Chase Freedom is about to see a drop. Probably all I can expect since I don't use my Citi AAEMC, or my Citi banking, that much and always PIF. Don't think I've put more than 1K on that puppy in any given month and typically 0 to 200.

The RE market tends to have fairly long up/plateau cycles but material down cycles are unusual. The one during the Great Recession being the notable exception. But my view is prices are currently at or near max. At least for the next 5-10 years. There is some possibility of a drop exacerbated by the tax changes. My best guess for that property is 10-15 decline in the next years. However, I don't expect drops like 2006-2010, which were about 40%. That said, yes, this looks to be reasonably attractive. My initial thoughts were quite similar to yours. But not enough for me to further complicate my finances at my age.

That happened to me when I opened my Walmart MC card. Reported 0 balance and on time before I got the card. The other odd thing that happened was I got about a 40 point bump in FICOs because the bucket I was in had dropped my scores a large amount for having balances on all my existing cards even though the balances were quite low compared to my CLs. The additional, 0 balance card recovered my scores even though it was also a new account reporting.

Interesting stuff guys. Yep, seeking Alpha. I'm in San Diego and the condo is in an area of high demand. Currently. OTOH, the valuation is quite high at 700k v 200k in 2010. My basis is 60k since I bought it in 1971. Prop tax is quite low at 1.1k/y due to the Prop 13 limit. I get nice rental income from it. I'm not sure how much Alpha there is left in it though. Prices in its market have plateaued since 2017. There is a general effect from the 2017 Fed. tax change due to SALT limitations and they seem to be clipping prices that are over about 600k from the overall SALT clip at 10k. And higher value homes are seeing a haircut. My current home's market value is now lower than when I bought it in 2003 and has seen a significant decrease from 2017 due to the SALT limit.

I got a strange offer in the mail. Offer to loan me $110,000 on a 30 year note with 0% APR and no monthly payments. The catch? They would also have an interest in the home if I were to sell it. When it is sold they would get a percentage of the home appreciation relative to the value of the home at the time of the loan in addition to getting the 110K back. Interestingly, it the offer includes taking a loss as well. In the event I sold the home for less than the current appraised value they would reduce the 110K using the same formula. This was described as a special offer they were extending to a selected group and is for the condo I own with a current market value around 700K. Looks like a cash heavy group looking for long term cap gains. Few investors are looking for such a long term investment with zero cash flow so I'm curious as to what the biz case is. Few investors would do this. Must be some folks with a lot of cash looking for a place to stick some of it. Anyone else run across anything so weird?

Yes, my POB is the primary address in each of them. But Citi has not yet pulled credit so I'm guessing the physical addy not being in the USPO database of street addresses kicked it for manual review before a pull. So I expect a hard pull Monday. I did get an email confirming the application.

Still no CRA pulls. My guess is that it got sent for some sort of manual review. Probably related to the POB issue and the fact that my residential address is not listed as an actual address in the USPO database. Over half the time ordering something online it won't let me complete the order because it says I have to enter a "legal" street address. They use that to make sure they have a place to mail stuff.

Thanks for that! I looked up my membership ID that way and found the leading numbers. So I decided to apply by phone since it didn't like my POB. Very good CSR, who went through all the disclosure stuff. She took the POB w/o a problem unlike the online app but who knows what it does in their system. No instant approval, but also no hard inqs showing up. Got the usual 7-10 days and they will contact if additional info needed. Perhaps it needs to be checked against Costco records. FICOs are 809-811 across the board.

I think the 2% cash back limit cuts in at less than 10% of the jewelry cost. Sort of kills the deal. We load up on large bags of frozen peas, string beans, shrimp, etc. as well as assorted booze (JW Blue, Patron TQ, etc). Their Lobster Mac and Cheese is fantastic. Lucky to get out of there for under $500 every 2 weeks and sometimes hit 1k or more.. But I go to Walmart for Spam. They have all the flavors one could want. Must be a lot of PI's shopping there.

Where did you see this? I just looked at the site and don't see anything re a 75% bonus? There is a $200 bonus for spending a certain amount in 3 months. Nothing special about 100K cd other than you get free checking and lower fees on various other items. The other (main) problem is the BofA cash card is shown as a MC and Costco doesn't take MC.

That's one of the cards I've been thinking about for a while since there's a BA branch nearby and I've been thinking of opening a CD there*. Would bump up against the limit sometimes since we often exceed that in a quarter. OTOH, the 3% deal sounds pretty cool and I wasn't aware of it. * I've avoided having anything to do with BofA ever since they suggested I might have made up a teller's scribble on a deposit after they misplaced the deposited check and my checks started bouncing. Found the check in a drawer where they put checks they couldn't figure out how to process. They actually let me rummage around in the drawer to find it. Hard to believe they did that - even back then, OTOH, that was in the early 70's. But, at this point, it's just an emotional reaction to being accused so I'm trying to get over it.