MyCardBlog

According to The Wall Street Journal, Fair Isaac, which created the popular FICO credit score, is making some small adjustments to the way it calculates American people’s credit scores.

The penalties for occasional slip-ups in making monthly payments will be reduced; while those who repeatedly make late payments will see their scores fall more.

People who are using more than 80% of their limits on credit cards will see their scores fall more. (It’s important to get a huge credit limit and lower the usage of your credit.)

Those who manage a variety of loans — such as having a mortgage, an auto loan, and credit cards at the same time — will see boost of their credit scores only if they can perfectly manage their credit—never a late payment.

Applying for credit too many times won’t hurt your score any longer, which used to lower your score. (This is definitely good news for those deal catchers.)

In a word, the changes seem to make clearer distinctions between good credit risks and bad ones.

The changes of the new credit scoring system intend to provide better prediction on whether you are a good borrower or not. If you are already have a good credit score, please keep doing what you are doing now. If you are always missing the payments, you’d better knock your head and figure out every method you can to make timely payments.

I have a post about how to know your credit score. However, the score you can get from those credit services are not the official FICO credit score. Sometimes we call it FAKO score. Of course, if you have a WaMu credit card, you can get the official FICO credit score for free. Today I found that at myFICO.com you can use free FICO score estimator to roughly estimate you myFICO score. The process is very simple. You just have to answer 10 simple questions about your current credit status—how many credit cards, balance, loans, etc. Then you will get an estimated FICO score range. If you don’t want to deal with credit bureaus, this is a nice tool to roughly know your credit score. I think this will be helpful for your future use. I used this credit score estimator and got the following credit range.

Click here to get your FICO score.

I have 12 credit cards from the following credit card issuers: BOA, Citi, Chase, AMEX, Discover, National City, WaMu, University of Illinois Credit Union and HSBC. To be a smart credit card user, I just selectively use some of them. Here I’d like to share my experience with you.

1). National City Everyday Rewards Visa Card-up to 4% cash back on everyday purchase. You can get 4% cash back at gas stations and 2% cash back at restaurants. This is my first credit card in US. I definitely will keep it all my life. It will automatically send out a check once you reach $100 in rewards. I usually use it at restaurants and gas stations.

2). Chase Freedom Visa Card-3% cash back on the first $600 of purchases in your top 3 Everyday Spending Categories and a 1% rebate on all other purchases. Right now, they also offer $100 sign-up bonus after first purchase (officially you can only get $50). I use this card to pay my cell phone and cable/internet bills. I also use this card at Meijier (a supermarket similar to Wal-Mart from where you can’t get 3% cash back). You can get a check when you have $50 in rewards, or you can get a $250 check once you reach $200 in rewards. It seems you can make 3.75% and 1.25% cash back if you can wait to reach $200 in rewards. (This is what I’m planning to do.)

3). Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Card-1 point per $1 spent. You can get 10,000 bonus points after first purchase which will let you get 3 free night stays at SPG hotels. If you can spend $15,000 in the first 6 months, you can get additional 15,000 points. You can start to redeem a free night stay at SPG hotels for as low as 2,000 points. The other feature of this card is you can transfer the points to miles mostly on 1:1 basis plus bonus points. For examples, 20,000 points can be redeemed as 25,000 miles. The points can be redeemed as almost any airline miles. The annual fee for the first year is waived, and is $45 per year if you’d like to keep it.

4). Household Bank Platinum MasterCard -2% cash back on everything. I have nothing to say about this card. It’s just wonderful! You can request the cash back check for every $25.

5). Discover Open Road Card-5% cash back on the first $100 of purchase for gas and auto maintenance per month. It’s good that I never spend more than $100 at gas stations and have a 4% cash back card as a backup.

If you have any ideas, please let me know.

By the end of this year, consumers in all 50 states can have the right to freeze their own credit files in all 3 credit bureaus. A security freeze gives consumers the choice to “freeze” or lock access to their credit file against anyone who may be trying to open up a new account or to get new credit under their name. In this way, an identity thief cannot open a new account. However, if you want to apply for a credit, you have to unlock your credit accounts by using a special PIN number.

Each year, there are millions of Americans suffer from the identity theft. Obviously, consumers’ personal and financial data has become the gold of 21st century. That’s why we witness so many ID thefts in the modern information society. (In set shows the major ID leaks this year.) Freezing your credit files is the first step which you can do to against the identity theft. The cost is $10 for each credit bureau for a year. Then, if you want to apply for a mortgage, car loan, or credit card, you have to pay another $10 to unlock your credit file. Is the credit freezing worth the money? I leave this to you to make the judgments. Actually, there are many credit monitoring services available. You can use those services to monitor your credit files at 3 credit bureaus at any time. (See the post here.)

Video about Credit Freezing

Recently I received many emails from so called “Bank of America” which said there were some unauthorized activities about my account at Bank of America. I also heard that someone really took it as real and revealed their registration information. If you look closely at their email address—<pp-verify@yahoo.com>, <bankofamerica@yahoo.com>, and <bankofamerica@google.com>—you can immediately make a judgment by yourself. A very ridiculous thing is that I click the link they offered and, do you know what I put in? I put in words like “bitch, 911, FBI, F**K you”, as my name, SSN, address, and phone number and then I can submit the information at last! Hmm……but we should be aware that the website is similar to the real Bank of America web. Here I put one of the email I received:

Dear Bank of America client,
You have received this email because you or someone had used your account from different locations.For security purpose, we are required to open an investigation into this matter.
In order to safeguard your account, we require that you confirm your banking details.
The help speed up to this process, please access the following link so we ca complete the verification of your Bank of America Online Banking Account registration information.
http://0xd20e5fb6/icons/…/www.bankofamerica.com/sslencrypt218bit/online_banking/ (see the link!)
If we do no receive the appropriate account verification within 48 hours, then we will assume this Bank of America account is fraudulent and will be suspended.
The purpose of this verification is to ensure that your bank account has not been fraudulently used and to combat the fraud from our community. We appreciate your support and understanding and thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

I don’t know next time they will send me emails under which bank’s name….But I won’t fill in my personal information as required from every email. I hope you also won’t give away your personal information. We have phone and we can call them.

Upromise.com is offering free one year Identity Theft Protection plan for us. However, you can’t see the credit report in this plan. They will notify you whenever there is a change in your credit report. It’s really nice for them to do this. Nowadays, we have to pay to enroll in the credit monitoring plans at least fot $100 per year. To join this protection, you can join the Upromise program (here) or you don’t have to join it. (here) Most of us may not be familiar with Upromise. Upromise is a college service provider that helps families earn, save and pay for higher educations. Joining their program is free—sounds like non-profit organization. You can get lots of benefits from them.

By the way, Citi is providing Citi Upromise Platinum Select Mastercard which will give you 1% cash back on everyday purchase and 10% cahs back on 7000+ grocery and drug stores. It also provides 0% APR on balance transfer without a transaction fee. For those who wants to take advantage of the 0 APR on balance transfer offer it’s a good choice.

I can expect that most of us may or may not know our credit scores. Someone may even haven’t checked his or her scredit report! I think check your credit report every month or every several months is a must. You should be always careful about your identity fraud. With the development of advanced technology, the indentity fraud seems as a major concern for us. based on my own experience, I list some services that you can use.

1. You have the right to check your credit report once every year from annualcreditreport.com. You can try one credit bureau each time. You don’t have to pull credit report from 3 credit bureaus at the same time. You can check another bureau later. For example, I requested to see my credit report from TransUnion in Feb. Then I can request to see my credit report in Experian in June. Then in November, I can see the credit report from Equifax. Our law gives us the right to check our credit report once every year for free. The credit report you pulled from annualcreditreport.com can be viewed online for one month. They don’t report credit score. (Don’t confuse with freecredtireort.com! They are not free!)

2. Every time when you get rejected for an application for a credit card or checking/saving account, you have to right to request a credit report from the credit bureau. Which credit bureau you can request depends on which credit bureau they pull when you file the application. It’s free. Again they don’t provide credit score.

3. The private credit service from each credit bureau. For example, TransUnion provides the service named truecredit. Right now they offer unlimited credit score and credit report from transunion for only $9.95/mon. The first month is free. Experian and Equifax also provide similar service. IF you’d like, they also provide 3-in-1 credit report and credit score. As long as you pay them money, you can get all 3 credit reports and credit scores from them.

4. MyFico.com offers the true credit score for you. The above mentioned services give you FAKO credit score. Altough they use similar scoring system as MyFico, MyFico is the only place you can get your true credit score. Again MyFico will also provide credit report for you. But you have to pay it.

5 . National City Identity Protect. I use this service since this July. I can pull my credit report from 3 bureaus daily and it also provide the credit score from Transunion. The price is $8.95/mon. The first month is $1.

6. CreditSecure from American Express. This service provides 3-in-1 credit report. You can get FAKO from 3 credit bureaus. The price is $11.99/mon. If you call then up, you will get $99.95 per year. The system is much more beautiful than Truecredit. You need have an American Express card to sign in. The first month is free.

7. Citi Identity Monitor. I haven’ t used this service before. You can get 3-in-1 credit report and creedit score for just $12.95/mon. The first month is free. (766318 to enroll yourself)

8. Chase Identity Protection. It seems it’s similar service like Citi.

9. Costco Identity Guard. They provide 3-in-1 credit report and credit score. The drawback compared to other service is you can only update your credit report and credit score monthly. The price for Executive Members is $7.49/mon. And $9.49/mon for Gold Star & Business Members.

10. Walmart TrueCredit Service. I believe this service is actually provided by TrueCredit. But you pay through Walmart. They increase the rate recently.

11. Privacy Guard. You can try their service for just $1 for the first 2 months. And then you have to pay $129.99 per year. You can get 3-in-1 credit report and credit score.

12. Privacy Matters. Believe me, don’t use their service. The price for the first 7 days is $1 and then you have to pay $29.95/mon. You have better choices.

I believe you can find more credit services to get yourself know your credit score and credit report. The above mentione are the most popular srevices we use today. And we are not willing to provide our personal information to those private owned services. Get started to see your credit report and score! You will have better chance to get a credit card or checking/saving account.

The credit card users have a right to review their credit reports on quarterly, semi-annually or annually basis. They can send request for their credit report to credit bureau. The better credit scores extracted from these reports help debt relief for borrowers. It’s a best source for determining credit worthiness of the borrower hence helps in deciding debt consolidation rates for them. Debt financing or credit consolidation help business people in managing their business finance requirements more efficiently and more effectively.