It's all a big guessing game anyway. FICO does not release the actual formula,
Not really. 35% of your score is payment history, 30% is amounts owed, 15% is your length of credit history, 10% new credit, 10% types of credit used. How all that plays in makes it fairly simple to get a rough (within about 20 points) calculation of someone's credit score based on their report. There's even a calculator right on MyFico.com (when you've bought a report and score) that allows you to look at all kinds of hypothetical situations (what if I miss a payment, what if I bought a house, what if I...) and how they'll affect your score based on your existing report. We may not have the exact formula, but it isn't exactly rocket science.
and even though you can see the score from TransUnion/Experian/Equifax, the banks do not use the score from those agencies.
Well first of all, you can't buy a FICO score from Experian. They ended their relationship with MyFico years ago, which cut off consumers from the only place they could purchase the actual score. The only place I know of where you can still get your Experian score regularly is PSECU (you need to be a member with a bank account, then you get it monthly through the website). Secondly, Equifax has a FICO score available on their site, but it's very well hidden. The score they push on the main page is garbage. The best place to get your credit scores is directly from Fair Isaac Corporation, whose consumer website is myfico.com.
Secondly, the banks (nearly all of them) use FICO for their lending decisions. It's important to remember that there are different niche formulas for FICO scoring beyond the basic one. There's one for credit cards, one for auto loans, one for mortgages, etc that change the weighting a bit. They're still based on the base FICO scoring model; they just weight things slightly differently. Not all lenders use those flavors and most will tell you if you contact them. In any event, it's not terribly difficult to estimate how the weighting will affect your score if you know the base score.
They calculate it themselves, and they can use a different weighting in the formula.
This is incorrect and it'd be silly for them to try. Fair Isaac Corporation's one product is the FICO scoring formulas. It's what's kept them in business for over 50 years. The credit reporting agencies gather the data and Fair Isaac Corp runs that data through a formula to spit out a score that tells creditors how likely it is that you (someone they've never met and know nothing about) will stick to the terms of the agreement if they extend credit to you. That's how it works. Now, a bank offering you a credit card might pull the FICO score that gives slightly higher weighting to revolving credit accounts and a bank (I should say creditor, as banks aren't the only ones by far) offering you an auto loan might pull the FICO score that weighs those types of installment loans more heavily, but the base formula remains unchanged and we know enough about that to know basically what the creditor will see when they pull the score if we know what's on our credit reports (which we have a right to, in the US, by law).
Also, FICO is not the only scoring company. VantageScore, NextGen, BEACON, and EMPIRICA.. to name a few.. and your bank can use any of those for your account.
So even if you know your credit score... you don't really know your credit score.
So much fail. We'll come back to Vantage in a moment. NextGen is the name of the latest FICO scoring model. BEACON is the old name for Equifax's branding of the FICO formula applied to their reporting data. For NextGen FICO scores, it's actually now called pinnacle. Empirica is the old name for TransUnion's branding of the FICO formula applied to their reporting data. For NextGen FICO scores, it's now called Precision. It's all still FICO and they're all using the exact same FIC
3%? What is this, 1995? Nobody's paying 3% anymore except -maybe- for AmEx. And that, friends, is why nobody wants to take AmEx.
Anyway, if some retailers actually are raising prices slightly (maybe 1, 1.5%), I'm still ahead of the game and able to float a lot of money for less than free. Also, I don't know where you live, but gas stations around the US were giving cash discounts back when gasoline prices shot way up. I don't recall any mass shutdowns for law violations.
Very smart practice. What I do to keep all my old accounts active is actually put a small recurring bill or two (Netflix, season passes, etc) on each one. I pay it off right away, but it keeps regular activity going through them.
Another thing you can do is to call them every so often and ask for better terms. Target number one should be any annual fees. No reason to stick free money in their pockets. Depending on the issuer, they'll usually be more willing to work with an old customer who isn't using the card as much in the hopes of enticing them to start using it again.
Whether you're the master over your credit or your credit's the master over you depends entirely on your responsibility, self-control, planning, credit education, and decision making. I've been on both sides of that game. Educating yourself is the first step to taking control and keeping it. Making smart decisions means you'll have access to lots of money (relative to what you're making) at very little cost.
This is why you maintain an FSA or an HSA. Those cover your deductibles and other out of pocket expenses. The money going into them comes out tax-free. Any medical expenses too big to pay off all at once, you call them and work out an installment plan. Most places will take $25 or $50 a month; often even less. If you make very little money and that's going to be a problem, most places will knock off a huge chunk of your bill (if not the whole thing) and work out ridiculously flexible terms. They just want to get paid what they can get paid. They'll get the rest from insurance companies (which is why my premiums are higher than they should be).
I had a 19% APR on a card, got it lowered to a permanent 12% just by calling the bank and switching to their "low rate" option (no "perks" like reward points, but in the long run they mean much less anyway).
This depends on how you're using the card. If you're carrying a balance on the card (particularly a large balance that you can't pay off), then lower interest makes sense. If you have no balance on the card, then having the rewards makes more sense (regardless of the interest rate). They can charge you a 99% APR, but you won't pay a dime in interest so long as you pay the balance in full prior to the end of the grace period each month (typically around 24 - 28 days after the transaction). In the case of someone who's not carrying a balance, getting 1 or 2% cash back = free money. If you run all your purchases through your rewards card and pay it off within the grace period, you're getting cash back and losing nothing to interest. At that point, it's like getting a 1 or 2% raise in pay.
The banks still make all the money they need from retailer fees. You won't be their favorite customer, but I've never heard a credible account of a bank shutting down an active account in good standing. The typical thing that happens is someone "sock-drawers" a card (puts it away and doesn't use it) for several years and find that the bank comes back and basically says "since you basically aren't a customer at this point anyway, we thought we'd go ahead and make it official".
If you think of your credit rating as a metric of your utility as a customer for credit services, rather than as a metric of how good you are at paying off debts, it sometimes makes a bit more sense.
But that's wrong. It only makes sense when you look at the credit score for what it is: a measure of how likely you are to keep to the terms of credit extended to you at a given time. Anything else is hogwash and won't make sense when you know what goes into the score. People with middle-of-the-road credit are the best customers for credit services. They pay higher fees, higher interest rates, and often make a late payment or two (which adds even more fees and higher interest rates). People with very high credit scores often give creditors very little actual profit. You have to offer them super low rates with no fees and they generally aren't going to give you any further opportunities to get more out of them. They're a reliable source of very, very little income for creditors. As such, the credit score is a rating of how likely it is you'll stick to the letter of the agreement between you and the creditor for the life of the account (as of the moment when the score is pulled).
A level of responsibility/having-your-shit-together below a certain level is bad, because the chronically impecunious just don't have much blood to squeeze out. A level of responsibility above a certain level is also bad, because you are the credit-industry equivalent of those rational shoppers who come in, buy the loss-leader, and then leave that big-box stores loath so much...
Now this isn't entirely right either. Certain lenders deal only in certain arenas. Some have a niche dealing with bad-credit customers. They work in fees and rates that build in what basically amounts to default insurance for the company. They're willing to put up with x% defaulting because they have so much profit coming in from the people who are actually paying that it all balances out and they can make good money. You also have broad-base lenders (Honda's credit arm is actually one of these) who'll lend to just about everyone, letting everyone cover each other's risk via volume and slightly higher (but still pretty good) rates and fees. I've hardly ever seen a creditor operating exclusively at the high end. Those who do often serve the high rollers with outstanding credit and charge huge (relative to what I make) fees for crazy levels of service. Most creditors would rather have a mix of mid and high credit scoring customers. It allows them to balance risk and show a decently safe and stable balance sheet.
Flagrantly unreliable behavior tends to knock your score down; because it casts real doubt on your ability to pay within reasonable time, and the net present value of having loaned you money; but excessively virtuous behavior strongly suggests that you will just skip in and take advantage of the free loan, without ever tripping on any late fees or interest payments by which better customers pay for the service...
Actually, any unreliable behavior (30 day late, etc) knocks your score down in a hurry. Someone with a score approaching 800 might see a 30+ point drop from being 30 days late on any one given account. The problem with being perfect all the time is that any sign of weakness makes it look as though you may have a house of cards about to come falling down. Still, from a consumer's point of view, having that high score is always the best for you. Over about 760 or so (780 for some lenders), you'll have access to virtually free credit for nearly anything you want to buy. You still have to be smart about what you do and not assume you'll get perfect rates to match your perfect score. Your first offer typically won't reflect your score; you need to shop around to find the truly gorgeous offers.
With a rating above 720, you can easily join any credit union with which you have eligibility (and most have back doors to get in) and get a credit card with no annual fee and a ~10% interest rate or lower. Word to the wise: save yourself a hard inquiry and sign up for every account you need when you sign up with the credit union. Most of them seem to want to hit your report every time you add something new.
You don't get to sit in judgement of anyone else who uses credit properly just because you don't have a clue what you're doing. If all your credit cards are at 30% interest, you don't know what you're doing. My gf's cards aren't near that high and her credit's terrible.
I suspect: * 1. You're lying about your score to prove a point * 2. You're lying about your interest rates to prove a point * 3. You aren't telling us the whole story * 4. You've gotten scores from somewhere other than MyFico.com (and thus, almost certainly aren't giving us FICO scores)
Also, simply pay off the cards prior to the grace period expiration and they won't charge you a dime; regardless of the APR. Learn to use credit; don't let it use you.
I've floated many thousands of dollars at 0% interest while getting an average of 2% cash back on all my purchases (basically a 2% raise) for several years. Meanwhile, I bought a nice car and I'll pay a total of about $400 interest over the life of the loan. I'm literally being paid for buying what I want, when I want, within the limits of what I can actually afford. They're paying me.
If slavery is having someone else float you free money and paying you to take it, sign me up. I'm in.
How much a given hard inquiry will affect your score varies with the information in the account (things like how many hard inquiries are already on there). If someone already has 9 hard inquiries, they almost certainly aren't getting away with a 1 point hit.
My high credit score has enabled me to keep float about $13,000 at 0% over the past 3 years (it's all being paid off as I'm comfortable doing) while giving me an average of 2% extra cash in hand from my rewards card's cash-back feature. Further, it has me a car loan that'll cost me a whopping $400 in interest over the life of the loan. I've been able to do what I want, when I want, and I'm (literally) being paid money for the privilege.
There are people who let themselves become a slave to creditors and there are people who make creditors their bitch. Play the game right and you're golden. Have backup plans for your backup plans. Have contacts at the ready if anything goes wrong. Have reserves and make damn sure you can very easily afford what you're doing.
I've never understood the reasoning with why closing a 0 balance credit card should lower a credit score.
It doesn't necessarily; at least not immediately. Closing a revolving credit account with a zero balance changes your debt:total credit ratio among your revolving accounts. If you have a $0 balance on a $10,000 limit card and a $750 balance on a $1,000 limit card, and you then close the account for the $10,000 limit card, your total revolving credit utilization has gone from 7% (which is actually better than 0% usage) to 75%. Using 75% of your revolving credit is a major red flag that says you're over-extended and may be getting into trouble. FICO scoring has no memory when it comes to revolving account balances. It doesn't give you credit for going from 80% utilization to 10% utilization in a month; it merely gives you one score based on the 80% and one score based on the 10%. Likewise, it does not penalize you for going from 10% to 80% (though you'll take a hit just for being at 80% usage).
The other part of that comes in later. A fairly sizable chunk of your credit score comes from the average age of your credit accounts. Closing a high-interest revolving credit account won't affect your score today in terms of AAoA, but in a few years when that old, closed account drops off your report? Well now your average just got smaller and your score may have just taken a hit. The more accounts you have, the less losing one will matter. At the very least, it will likely eventually cost you a few points years later. However, if it drastically affects your utilization, you could see a big hit today, and if you don't have many accounts, you could also see a big hit years later when the closed account disappears.
You would think the credit tracking companies would look at you closing a high interest, high limit, card as a good thing.
Your credit report is a snapshot of where you are at the moment someone checks the report. The terms of your revolving accounts don't factor into the equation in terms of a basic credit score. They may for one of the niche scores (there are dozens and virtually nothing is known about them since consumers don't have regular access to them), but your basic FICO score has no idea whether a given card has great terms or bad terms. In terms of things like credit cards, it's looking for your debt:credit ratio on that account, your debt:credit ratio across your revolving accounts, and the age of that account (to factor into AAoA). It's also looking for any delinquencies on the account (30 days late, etc) and how recent they are. That's about it.
It's like saying paying off a mortgage should lower your credit score.
Paying off your mortgage has the effect of reducing the variety of credit accounts you have open. It's treated as a type of installment loan. If you have others (like an auto loan, student loans, etc), the impact will be pretty small.
In the end, what you need to understand is that the FICO score isn't about how smart you are, but about how likely it is you'll keep to the terms of credit extended to you at any given time. If you hold a mortgage, car loan, and several (very old) revolving accounts which are all in use and in good standing, you'll have a stellar credit score. If you've got collections, late payments, judgements, etc, then you're showing an inability or unwillingness to pay debts and your score will suffer. The area in between is basically left to showing how able you are to juggle a lot of different credit accounts and how responsible you are about not over-extending yourself just so you can have that dream vacation/new boat/etc. It's also important to remember that things like debt:income ratios, where you live, etc are NOT in your credit score. Your credit score is strictly a snapshot based on your current credit report and does nothing but measure the chances of you sticking to the terms of credit extended to you at that moment.
If you want to know more, you should visit the MyFico.com forums. The people there make a hobby out of understanding how all this stuff works.
Banks pay into the FDIC. Except in extreme cases (such as the financial meltdown) where banks are failing at an extremely unusually high rate, every dime comes from the banks themselves (through deposit insurance payments to the FDIC plus liquidation of failed banks' assets).
When a bank gets robbed or fails, 99% of the time, you and I don't pay a dime and nobody loses a penny.
Those look like they'll be great targets for us to practice on the next time we get frisky. Hopefully they make a lot of them so we don't run out too quickly.
Why would it have to be by sat? Why not an AWAC in the back with the pilots controlling from there?
Guess what the F-22 can do when it's blown up everything it can with the missiles it has. Oh yes, it can act as an AWACS stand-in for other friendly aircraft.
Only difference is, when it's no longer needed as a stealth AWACS, it can go get more missiles and blow up more stuff.
Drones will eventually be the future of air combat, but they certainly aren't the be-all end-all answer for 2012 or even 2020. Find me the drone that can shoot down an F-22 and I'll happily support shelving every other plane in the arsenal in favor of them. Until then, they need a lot more R&D to get to a point where they can actually replace F-22s, F-16s, and F/A-18s.
All this talk about how much more drones can do is all theoretical. Theoretically, drones can reach speeds and performance characteristics no human pilot ever could. In practice, we don't have any yet that match up against Gen5 aircraft (or even many Gen4/Gen4.5 aircraft). Hoping against that reality doesn't clear skies of enemy aircraft.
You realize that in Red vs Blue combat exercises, F-22s are so dominant against F-15e aircraft (and everything else) that they don't allow the F-22s to engage BVR anymore and actually start a lot of the sorties with multiple "red" aircraft behind each F-22 to give them a chance? Most Gen4 aircraft have a very hard time locking an F-22 even if it's sitting right in front of them.
During Exercise Northern Edge in Alaska in June 2006, 12 F-22s of the 94th FS downed 108 adversaries with no losses in simulated combat exercises. In two weeks of exercises, the Raptor-led Blue Force amassed 241 kills against two losses in air-to-air combat; neither Blue Force loss was an F-22. Shortly after was Red Flag 07-1 in February 2007. Fourteen F-22s of the 94th FS supported Blue Force strikes and undertook close air support sorties themselves. Against superior numbers of Red Force Aggressor F-15s and F-16s, 6-8 F-22s maintained air dominance throughout. No sorties were missed because of maintenance or other failures, and only one Raptor was judged lost against the opposing force's defeat. F-22s also provided airborne electronic surveillance.
According to Lt. Col. Larry Bruce, 65th AS commander, aggressor pilots turned up the heat on the F-22 using tactics they believe to be modern threats. For security purposes these tactics weren't released; nonetheless, they said their efforts against the Raptors were fruitless.
"We [even] tried to overload them with numbers and failed," said Colonel Bruce. "It's humbling to fly against the F-22." This is a remarkable testimony because the Red Flag aggressor pilots are renowned for their skill and experience. Lt. Col. Dirk Smith, 94th Fighter Squadron commander, said the aggressor forces represent the most lethal threat friendly forces would ever face.http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123041725
The F-22 is an air dominance aircraft. You don't fly F-22s against Iraq (where there's no air force) or Afghanistan (where there's no air force). You fly them against countries fielding Gen4 aircraft that could actually give F-15s some trouble. You do that because the F-22 will shoot down everything in the sky that isn't friendly before the unfriendlies know there's an enemy in the area. The F-22 is the hedge against a country using Russian, Chinese, or French built aircraft.
If you want to talk about costs, you need to look at the costs of an AIM-120D ($700,000) vs the cost of one of those Russian/Chinese/French aircraft ($40 Million - $60 Million). Add to that the cost of training a modern fighter pilot ($2.5 Million) and I'd say we're stupid to not have these things in play. The F-22 dominates anything on any drawing board anywhere in the world. With the time and expense of designing and building modern aircraft, that means we could sit by without doing any upgrades on the F-22s for the next 15 years and still dominate any airspace on the globe. The simple fact is, there isn't a nation on Earth with aircraft that can do anything but die horribly against the F-22. So let's throw our $700,000 missiles at their $50 Million planes and bring our pilots home to their families. Or we can try it your way: mass produce slightly cheaper aircraft and lose tons of them the next time we face someone with an actual air force.
The F-35 tries to do too many things. I'd be happy to see that thing scrapped in favor of more specialized (and functional) replacements, but we can't because it'd piss off everyone who put money into the program (which is just about all our allies). Typical stupid political crap. The same is said for the scrapping of the F-22. First they cut production to a fraction of what it was supposed to be, then they rolled up all the R&D costs and complained about how much each plane cost the country. That'd be like a major pharmaceutical company spending $30 Billion on R&D for a drug that cures cancer, then deciding to only make 10 pills and bitch that each pill cos
"That group of politicians are self-serving liars, but this group is benevolent and trying to help everyone!"
I knew there were still people like you out there, but I thought we'd pretty much fixed this kind of ignorance on Slashdot. I guess we've got some more work to do.
Here's a hint: neither side gives a shit about you. You're not even a pawn in their little game. At best, you're the chair they rest their fat, sweaty ass on while they play the game and get rich and powerful. That you believe you're on the same side or working towards similar goals is, quite frankly, pathetic.
If you want to see politicians who aren't stepping on every man, woman, and child to get a little higher up, look for the ones who've been marginalized as fanatical zealots and kooks. After all, in the game of politics, anyone who isn't crushing everyone else to get more money, power, and glory must be a lunatic.
The problem in this case is ignorance. If the government would simply provide simple, rational education to its citizens, there would be no problem implementing policy that's in the best interests of the people. So long as the government allows an ignorant populace to be paralyzed by fear of the invisible boogeyman of "radiation", the will of the people will be self-destructive and counter-productive.
It's been a year since the disaster happened. If the government had spent that time drilling the known facts about radiation (specifically as it relates to nuclear power plants) into the heads of the populace, there would be a broad consensus to move forward along a sensible path.
The citizens have the power to vote their government out of office if it's not abiding by their will. If the government becomes tyrannical, the people have the ability to revolt against it and overthrow it (see also: Arab Spring).
The Japanese government shouldn't listen only to me. The Japanese government should listen to reason and follow the course that's best for their people. In this case, the course that's best for their people is to operate clean, safe, nuclear power plants (and to do their job ensuring those plants remain clean and safe); NOT to shut down power plants that are clean and safe in favor of plants everyone knows are unsafe and horribly unclean.
Right now, the Japanese government is poisoning their own people with an energy policy that heavily favors power plants we know to be terribly hazardous to human health; both for the workers at those plants and anyone who lives near them or downstream from them. They're not doing this because they're malicious, but because their people are ignorant and full of fear about the vastly better alternative sitting there idling.
There just is no reasonable argument in favor of what they're doing right now. They should be fixing the problems of ignorance and fear while getting their people power in the cleanest, safest manner available. There's no justification for poisoning your own people while allowing them to remain ignorant of a better way.
It's not paranoia to lash out at governments that violate the fundamental human rights of their people.
It's not inconsistent to lash out at governments that prefer to let ignorant, fearful people drive policy decisions rather than educating them and doing the right thing. Getting the plants up and running is beneficial to the Japanese people and the economy (which is also beneficial to the people). Replacing those plants' power generation with increased output from less safe, vastly more damaging (in terms of environment and public health) sources does not benefit the people. This is quite clear and obvious to anyone looking at the situation with factual information and a brain to process it.
It's exactly the kind of response one would expect from scared, ignorant people. You rarely get logical, beneficial results when you operate on fear and ignore fact.
I don't need to be in Japan to know that this doesn't make any sense. First of all, TEPCO should be sued into oblivion and its management in prison cells right next to the Japanese regulators that allowed their plants to operate with known design defects for decades. So no, that company shouldn't be going anywhere. If someone wants to buy up the patents on whatever new technology they were developing, that money can go to pay the fines and lawsuits that company so richly deserves.
Secondly, it makes no sense for Japan to simply idle all their remaining plants. What they SHOULD be doing is a systematic examination of all their plants for known design issues like what felled the Fukushima reactors and actually FIX those. Then they should work on a regulatory overhaul so they aren't allowing known-unsafe plants to operate for decades at a stretch with no apparent oversight or concern for safety.
Lastly, they (and everyone else operating a nuclear power plant today) should be developing plans to cycle out very old plants and replace them with newer, safer, more efficient designs. Replacing 50 and 60 year old power plants with new ones that are safe and efficient? Imagine that! It's almost like it makes sense!
Even if they did none of this and just kept all the plants operating the same way they had been prior to the Fukushima mess, they'd still have the safest, cleanest power coming those plants. Yet they've decided instead to idle those plants and instead import massive amounts of horribly damaging and dangerous oil to burn for power. Frankly, it's sheer lunacy. There isn't a shred of logic to anything they've done. They spent decades operating on complacency and ignorance and now they're operating on fear and adrenaline.
The GP isn't making the claim that his country's and China's are the only two systems under which it is possible to exist. The GP merely indicates a preference for one over the other.
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It's all a big guessing game anyway. FICO does not release the actual formula,
Not really. 35% of your score is payment history, 30% is amounts owed, 15% is your length of credit history, 10% new credit, 10% types of credit used. How all that plays in makes it fairly simple to get a rough (within about 20 points) calculation of someone's credit score based on their report. There's even a calculator right on MyFico.com (when you've bought a report and score) that allows you to look at all kinds of hypothetical situations (what if I miss a payment, what if I bought a house, what if I ...) and how they'll affect your score based on your existing report. We may not have the exact formula, but it isn't exactly rocket science.
and even though you can see the score from TransUnion/Experian/Equifax, the banks do not use the score from those agencies.
Well first of all, you can't buy a FICO score from Experian. They ended their relationship with MyFico years ago, which cut off consumers from the only place they could purchase the actual score. The only place I know of where you can still get your Experian score regularly is PSECU (you need to be a member with a bank account, then you get it monthly through the website). Secondly, Equifax has a FICO score available on their site, but it's very well hidden. The score they push on the main page is garbage. The best place to get your credit scores is directly from Fair Isaac Corporation, whose consumer website is myfico.com.
Secondly, the banks (nearly all of them) use FICO for their lending decisions. It's important to remember that there are different niche formulas for FICO scoring beyond the basic one. There's one for credit cards, one for auto loans, one for mortgages, etc that change the weighting a bit. They're still based on the base FICO scoring model; they just weight things slightly differently. Not all lenders use those flavors and most will tell you if you contact them. In any event, it's not terribly difficult to estimate how the weighting will affect your score if you know the base score.
They calculate it themselves, and they can use a different weighting in the formula.
This is incorrect and it'd be silly for them to try. Fair Isaac Corporation's one product is the FICO scoring formulas. It's what's kept them in business for over 50 years. The credit reporting agencies gather the data and Fair Isaac Corp runs that data through a formula to spit out a score that tells creditors how likely it is that you (someone they've never met and know nothing about) will stick to the terms of the agreement if they extend credit to you. That's how it works. Now, a bank offering you a credit card might pull the FICO score that gives slightly higher weighting to revolving credit accounts and a bank (I should say creditor, as banks aren't the only ones by far) offering you an auto loan might pull the FICO score that weighs those types of installment loans more heavily, but the base formula remains unchanged and we know enough about that to know basically what the creditor will see when they pull the score if we know what's on our credit reports (which we have a right to, in the US, by law).
Also, FICO is not the only scoring company. VantageScore, NextGen, BEACON, and EMPIRICA.. to name a few.. and your bank can use any of those for your account.
So even if you know your credit score... you don't really know your credit score.
So much fail. We'll come back to Vantage in a moment. NextGen is the name of the latest FICO scoring model. BEACON is the old name for Equifax's branding of the FICO formula applied to their reporting data. For NextGen FICO scores, it's actually now called pinnacle. Empirica is the old name for TransUnion's branding of the FICO formula applied to their reporting data. For NextGen FICO scores, it's now called Precision. It's all still FICO and they're all using the exact same FIC
3%? What is this, 1995? Nobody's paying 3% anymore except -maybe- for AmEx. And that, friends, is why nobody wants to take AmEx.
Anyway, if some retailers actually are raising prices slightly (maybe 1, 1.5%), I'm still ahead of the game and able to float a lot of money for less than free. Also, I don't know where you live, but gas stations around the US were giving cash discounts back when gasoline prices shot way up. I don't recall any mass shutdowns for law violations.
Very smart practice. What I do to keep all my old accounts active is actually put a small recurring bill or two (Netflix, season passes, etc) on each one. I pay it off right away, but it keeps regular activity going through them.
Another thing you can do is to call them every so often and ask for better terms. Target number one should be any annual fees. No reason to stick free money in their pockets. Depending on the issuer, they'll usually be more willing to work with an old customer who isn't using the card as much in the hopes of enticing them to start using it again.
Whether you're the master over your credit or your credit's the master over you depends entirely on your responsibility, self-control, planning, credit education, and decision making. I've been on both sides of that game. Educating yourself is the first step to taking control and keeping it. Making smart decisions means you'll have access to lots of money (relative to what you're making) at very little cost.
This is why you maintain an FSA or an HSA. Those cover your deductibles and other out of pocket expenses. The money going into them comes out tax-free. Any medical expenses too big to pay off all at once, you call them and work out an installment plan. Most places will take $25 or $50 a month; often even less. If you make very little money and that's going to be a problem, most places will knock off a huge chunk of your bill (if not the whole thing) and work out ridiculously flexible terms. They just want to get paid what they can get paid. They'll get the rest from insurance companies (which is why my premiums are higher than they should be).
I had a 19% APR on a card, got it lowered to a permanent 12% just by calling the bank and switching to their "low rate" option (no "perks" like reward points, but in the long run they mean much less anyway).
This depends on how you're using the card. If you're carrying a balance on the card (particularly a large balance that you can't pay off), then lower interest makes sense. If you have no balance on the card, then having the rewards makes more sense (regardless of the interest rate). They can charge you a 99% APR, but you won't pay a dime in interest so long as you pay the balance in full prior to the end of the grace period each month (typically around 24 - 28 days after the transaction). In the case of someone who's not carrying a balance, getting 1 or 2% cash back = free money. If you run all your purchases through your rewards card and pay it off within the grace period, you're getting cash back and losing nothing to interest. At that point, it's like getting a 1 or 2% raise in pay.
The banks still make all the money they need from retailer fees. You won't be their favorite customer, but I've never heard a credible account of a bank shutting down an active account in good standing. The typical thing that happens is someone "sock-drawers" a card (puts it away and doesn't use it) for several years and find that the bank comes back and basically says "since you basically aren't a customer at this point anyway, we thought we'd go ahead and make it official".
If you think of your credit rating as a metric of your utility as a customer for credit services, rather than as a metric of how good you are at paying off debts, it sometimes makes a bit more sense.
But that's wrong. It only makes sense when you look at the credit score for what it is: a measure of how likely you are to keep to the terms of credit extended to you at a given time. Anything else is hogwash and won't make sense when you know what goes into the score. People with middle-of-the-road credit are the best customers for credit services. They pay higher fees, higher interest rates, and often make a late payment or two (which adds even more fees and higher interest rates). People with very high credit scores often give creditors very little actual profit. You have to offer them super low rates with no fees and they generally aren't going to give you any further opportunities to get more out of them. They're a reliable source of very, very little income for creditors. As such, the credit score is a rating of how likely it is you'll stick to the letter of the agreement between you and the creditor for the life of the account (as of the moment when the score is pulled).
A level of responsibility/having-your-shit-together below a certain level is bad, because the chronically impecunious just don't have much blood to squeeze out. A level of responsibility above a certain level is also bad, because you are the credit-industry equivalent of those rational shoppers who come in, buy the loss-leader, and then leave that big-box stores loath so much...
Now this isn't entirely right either. Certain lenders deal only in certain arenas. Some have a niche dealing with bad-credit customers. They work in fees and rates that build in what basically amounts to default insurance for the company. They're willing to put up with x% defaulting because they have so much profit coming in from the people who are actually paying that it all balances out and they can make good money. You also have broad-base lenders (Honda's credit arm is actually one of these) who'll lend to just about everyone, letting everyone cover each other's risk via volume and slightly higher (but still pretty good) rates and fees. I've hardly ever seen a creditor operating exclusively at the high end. Those who do often serve the high rollers with outstanding credit and charge huge (relative to what I make) fees for crazy levels of service. Most creditors would rather have a mix of mid and high credit scoring customers. It allows them to balance risk and show a decently safe and stable balance sheet.
Flagrantly unreliable behavior tends to knock your score down; because it casts real doubt on your ability to pay within reasonable time, and the net present value of having loaned you money; but excessively virtuous behavior strongly suggests that you will just skip in and take advantage of the free loan, without ever tripping on any late fees or interest payments by which better customers pay for the service...
Actually, any unreliable behavior (30 day late, etc) knocks your score down in a hurry. Someone with a score approaching 800 might see a 30+ point drop from being 30 days late on any one given account. The problem with being perfect all the time is that any sign of weakness makes it look as though you may have a house of cards about to come falling down. Still, from a consumer's point of view, having that high score is always the best for you. Over about 760 or so (780 for some lenders), you'll have access to virtually free credit for nearly anything you want to buy. You still have to be smart about what you do and not assume you'll get perfect rates to match your perfect score. Your first offer typically won't reflect your score; you need to shop around to find the truly gorgeous offers.
With a rating above 720, you can easily join any credit union with which you have eligibility (and most have back doors to get in) and get a credit card with no annual fee and a ~10% interest rate or lower. Word to the wise: save yourself a hard inquiry and sign up for every account you need when you sign up with the credit union. Most of them seem to want to hit your report every time you add something new.
You don't get to sit in judgement of anyone else who uses credit properly just because you don't have a clue what you're doing. If all your credit cards are at 30% interest, you don't know what you're doing. My gf's cards aren't near that high and her credit's terrible.
I suspect:
* 1. You're lying about your score to prove a point
* 2. You're lying about your interest rates to prove a point
* 3. You aren't telling us the whole story
* 4. You've gotten scores from somewhere other than MyFico.com (and thus, almost certainly aren't giving us FICO scores)
Also, simply pay off the cards prior to the grace period expiration and they won't charge you a dime; regardless of the APR. Learn to use credit; don't let it use you.
You're buying a house with no credit? A nice car?
I've floated many thousands of dollars at 0% interest while getting an average of 2% cash back on all my purchases (basically a 2% raise) for several years. Meanwhile, I bought a nice car and I'll pay a total of about $400 interest over the life of the loan. I'm literally being paid for buying what I want, when I want, within the limits of what I can actually afford. They're paying me.
If slavery is having someone else float you free money and paying you to take it, sign me up. I'm in.
How much a given hard inquiry will affect your score varies with the information in the account (things like how many hard inquiries are already on there). If someone already has 9 hard inquiries, they almost certainly aren't getting away with a 1 point hit.
My high credit score has enabled me to keep float about $13,000 at 0% over the past 3 years (it's all being paid off as I'm comfortable doing) while giving me an average of 2% extra cash in hand from my rewards card's cash-back feature. Further, it has me a car loan that'll cost me a whopping $400 in interest over the life of the loan. I've been able to do what I want, when I want, and I'm (literally) being paid money for the privilege.
There are people who let themselves become a slave to creditors and there are people who make creditors their bitch. Play the game right and you're golden. Have backup plans for your backup plans. Have contacts at the ready if anything goes wrong. Have reserves and make damn sure you can very easily afford what you're doing.
I've never understood the reasoning with why closing a 0 balance credit card should lower a credit score.
It doesn't necessarily; at least not immediately. Closing a revolving credit account with a zero balance changes your debt:total credit ratio among your revolving accounts. If you have a $0 balance on a $10,000 limit card and a $750 balance on a $1,000 limit card, and you then close the account for the $10,000 limit card, your total revolving credit utilization has gone from 7% (which is actually better than 0% usage) to 75%. Using 75% of your revolving credit is a major red flag that says you're over-extended and may be getting into trouble. FICO scoring has no memory when it comes to revolving account balances. It doesn't give you credit for going from 80% utilization to 10% utilization in a month; it merely gives you one score based on the 80% and one score based on the 10%. Likewise, it does not penalize you for going from 10% to 80% (though you'll take a hit just for being at 80% usage).
The other part of that comes in later. A fairly sizable chunk of your credit score comes from the average age of your credit accounts. Closing a high-interest revolving credit account won't affect your score today in terms of AAoA, but in a few years when that old, closed account drops off your report? Well now your average just got smaller and your score may have just taken a hit. The more accounts you have, the less losing one will matter. At the very least, it will likely eventually cost you a few points years later. However, if it drastically affects your utilization, you could see a big hit today, and if you don't have many accounts, you could also see a big hit years later when the closed account disappears.
You would think the credit tracking companies would look at you closing a high interest, high limit, card as a good thing.
Your credit report is a snapshot of where you are at the moment someone checks the report. The terms of your revolving accounts don't factor into the equation in terms of a basic credit score. They may for one of the niche scores (there are dozens and virtually nothing is known about them since consumers don't have regular access to them), but your basic FICO score has no idea whether a given card has great terms or bad terms. In terms of things like credit cards, it's looking for your debt:credit ratio on that account, your debt:credit ratio across your revolving accounts, and the age of that account (to factor into AAoA). It's also looking for any delinquencies on the account (30 days late, etc) and how recent they are. That's about it.
It's like saying paying off a mortgage should lower your credit score.
Paying off your mortgage has the effect of reducing the variety of credit accounts you have open. It's treated as a type of installment loan. If you have others (like an auto loan, student loans, etc), the impact will be pretty small.
In the end, what you need to understand is that the FICO score isn't about how smart you are, but about how likely it is you'll keep to the terms of credit extended to you at any given time. If you hold a mortgage, car loan, and several (very old) revolving accounts which are all in use and in good standing, you'll have a stellar credit score. If you've got collections, late payments, judgements, etc, then you're showing an inability or unwillingness to pay debts and your score will suffer. The area in between is basically left to showing how able you are to juggle a lot of different credit accounts and how responsible you are about not over-extending yourself just so you can have that dream vacation/new boat/etc. It's also important to remember that things like debt:income ratios, where you live, etc are NOT in your credit score. Your credit score is strictly a snapshot based on your current credit report and does nothing but measure the chances of you sticking to the terms of credit extended to you at that moment.
If you want to know more, you should visit the MyFico.com forums. The people there make a hobby out of understanding how all this stuff works.
Banks pay into the FDIC. Except in extreme cases (such as the financial meltdown) where banks are failing at an extremely unusually high rate, every dime comes from the banks themselves (through deposit insurance payments to the FDIC plus liquidation of failed banks' assets).
When a bank gets robbed or fails, 99% of the time, you and I don't pay a dime and nobody loses a penny.
Those look like they'll be great targets for us to practice on the next time we get frisky. Hopefully they make a lot of them so we don't run out too quickly.
Why would it have to be by sat? Why not an AWAC in the back with the pilots controlling from there?
Guess what the F-22 can do when it's blown up everything it can with the missiles it has. Oh yes, it can act as an AWACS stand-in for other friendly aircraft.
Only difference is, when it's no longer needed as a stealth AWACS, it can go get more missiles and blow up more stuff.
Drones will eventually be the future of air combat, but they certainly aren't the be-all end-all answer for 2012 or even 2020. Find me the drone that can shoot down an F-22 and I'll happily support shelving every other plane in the arsenal in favor of them. Until then, they need a lot more R&D to get to a point where they can actually replace F-22s, F-16s, and F/A-18s.
All this talk about how much more drones can do is all theoretical. Theoretically, drones can reach speeds and performance characteristics no human pilot ever could. In practice, we don't have any yet that match up against Gen5 aircraft (or even many Gen4/Gen4.5 aircraft). Hoping against that reality doesn't clear skies of enemy aircraft.
You realize that in Red vs Blue combat exercises, F-22s are so dominant against F-15e aircraft (and everything else) that they don't allow the F-22s to engage BVR anymore and actually start a lot of the sorties with multiple "red" aircraft behind each F-22 to give them a chance? Most Gen4 aircraft have a very hard time locking an F-22 even if it's sitting right in front of them.
During Exercise Northern Edge in Alaska in June 2006, 12 F-22s of the 94th FS downed 108 adversaries with no losses in simulated combat exercises. In two weeks of exercises, the Raptor-led Blue Force amassed 241 kills against two losses in air-to-air combat; neither Blue Force loss was an F-22. Shortly after was Red Flag 07-1 in February 2007. Fourteen F-22s of the 94th FS supported Blue Force strikes and undertook close air support sorties themselves. Against superior numbers of Red Force Aggressor F-15s and F-16s, 6-8 F-22s maintained air dominance throughout. No sorties were missed because of maintenance or other failures, and only one Raptor was judged lost against the opposing force's defeat. F-22s also provided airborne electronic surveillance.
According to Lt. Col. Larry Bruce, 65th AS commander, aggressor pilots turned up the heat on the F-22 using tactics they believe to be modern threats. For security purposes these tactics weren't released; nonetheless, they said their efforts against the Raptors were fruitless.
"We [even] tried to overload them with numbers and failed," said Colonel Bruce. "It's humbling to fly against the F-22." This is a remarkable testimony because the Red Flag aggressor pilots are renowned for their skill and experience. Lt. Col. Dirk Smith, 94th Fighter Squadron commander, said the aggressor forces represent the most lethal threat friendly forces would ever face. http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123041725
The F-22 is an air dominance aircraft. You don't fly F-22s against Iraq (where there's no air force) or Afghanistan (where there's no air force). You fly them against countries fielding Gen4 aircraft that could actually give F-15s some trouble. You do that because the F-22 will shoot down everything in the sky that isn't friendly before the unfriendlies know there's an enemy in the area. The F-22 is the hedge against a country using Russian, Chinese, or French built aircraft.
If you want to talk about costs, you need to look at the costs of an AIM-120D ($700,000) vs the cost of one of those Russian/Chinese/French aircraft ($40 Million - $60 Million). Add to that the cost of training a modern fighter pilot ($2.5 Million) and I'd say we're stupid to not have these things in play. The F-22 dominates anything on any drawing board anywhere in the world. With the time and expense of designing and building modern aircraft, that means we could sit by without doing any upgrades on the F-22s for the next 15 years and still dominate any airspace on the globe. The simple fact is, there isn't a nation on Earth with aircraft that can do anything but die horribly against the F-22. So let's throw our $700,000 missiles at their $50 Million planes and bring our pilots home to their families. Or we can try it your way: mass produce slightly cheaper aircraft and lose tons of them the next time we face someone with an actual air force.
The F-35 tries to do too many things. I'd be happy to see that thing scrapped in favor of more specialized (and functional) replacements, but we can't because it'd piss off everyone who put money into the program (which is just about all our allies). Typical stupid political crap. The same is said for the scrapping of the F-22. First they cut production to a fraction of what it was supposed to be, then they rolled up all the R&D costs and complained about how much each plane cost the country. That'd be like a major pharmaceutical company spending $30 Billion on R&D for a drug that cures cancer, then deciding to only make 10 pills and bitch that each pill cos
"That group of politicians are self-serving liars, but this group is benevolent and trying to help everyone!"
I knew there were still people like you out there, but I thought we'd pretty much fixed this kind of ignorance on Slashdot. I guess we've got some more work to do.
Here's a hint: neither side gives a shit about you. You're not even a pawn in their little game. At best, you're the chair they rest their fat, sweaty ass on while they play the game and get rich and powerful. That you believe you're on the same side or working towards similar goals is, quite frankly, pathetic.
If you want to see politicians who aren't stepping on every man, woman, and child to get a little higher up, look for the ones who've been marginalized as fanatical zealots and kooks. After all, in the game of politics, anyone who isn't crushing everyone else to get more money, power, and glory must be a lunatic.
The problem in this case is ignorance. If the government would simply provide simple, rational education to its citizens, there would be no problem implementing policy that's in the best interests of the people. So long as the government allows an ignorant populace to be paralyzed by fear of the invisible boogeyman of "radiation", the will of the people will be self-destructive and counter-productive.
It's been a year since the disaster happened. If the government had spent that time drilling the known facts about radiation (specifically as it relates to nuclear power plants) into the heads of the populace, there would be a broad consensus to move forward along a sensible path.
The citizens have the power to vote their government out of office if it's not abiding by their will. If the government becomes tyrannical, the people have the ability to revolt against it and overthrow it (see also: Arab Spring).
The Japanese government shouldn't listen only to me. The Japanese government should listen to reason and follow the course that's best for their people. In this case, the course that's best for their people is to operate clean, safe, nuclear power plants (and to do their job ensuring those plants remain clean and safe); NOT to shut down power plants that are clean and safe in favor of plants everyone knows are unsafe and horribly unclean.
Right now, the Japanese government is poisoning their own people with an energy policy that heavily favors power plants we know to be terribly hazardous to human health; both for the workers at those plants and anyone who lives near them or downstream from them. They're not doing this because they're malicious, but because their people are ignorant and full of fear about the vastly better alternative sitting there idling.
There just is no reasonable argument in favor of what they're doing right now. They should be fixing the problems of ignorance and fear while getting their people power in the cleanest, safest manner available. There's no justification for poisoning your own people while allowing them to remain ignorant of a better way.
It's not paranoia to lash out at governments that violate the fundamental human rights of their people.
It's not inconsistent to lash out at governments that prefer to let ignorant, fearful people drive policy decisions rather than educating them and doing the right thing. Getting the plants up and running is beneficial to the Japanese people and the economy (which is also beneficial to the people). Replacing those plants' power generation with increased output from less safe, vastly more damaging (in terms of environment and public health) sources does not benefit the people. This is quite clear and obvious to anyone looking at the situation with factual information and a brain to process it.
It's exactly the kind of response one would expect from scared, ignorant people. You rarely get logical, beneficial results when you operate on fear and ignore fact.
I don't need to be in Japan to know that this doesn't make any sense. First of all, TEPCO should be sued into oblivion and its management in prison cells right next to the Japanese regulators that allowed their plants to operate with known design defects for decades. So no, that company shouldn't be going anywhere. If someone wants to buy up the patents on whatever new technology they were developing, that money can go to pay the fines and lawsuits that company so richly deserves.
Secondly, it makes no sense for Japan to simply idle all their remaining plants. What they SHOULD be doing is a systematic examination of all their plants for known design issues like what felled the Fukushima reactors and actually FIX those. Then they should work on a regulatory overhaul so they aren't allowing known-unsafe plants to operate for decades at a stretch with no apparent oversight or concern for safety.
Lastly, they (and everyone else operating a nuclear power plant today) should be developing plans to cycle out very old plants and replace them with newer, safer, more efficient designs. Replacing 50 and 60 year old power plants with new ones that are safe and efficient? Imagine that! It's almost like it makes sense!
Even if they did none of this and just kept all the plants operating the same way they had been prior to the Fukushima mess, they'd still have the safest, cleanest power coming those plants. Yet they've decided instead to idle those plants and instead import massive amounts of horribly damaging and dangerous oil to burn for power. Frankly, it's sheer lunacy. There isn't a shred of logic to anything they've done. They spent decades operating on complacency and ignorance and now they're operating on fear and adrenaline.
Strawman.
The GP isn't making the claim that his country's and China's are the only two systems under which it is possible to exist. The GP merely indicates a preference for one over the other.