Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread

[Sijray21]

Does keeping your Wells Fargo card just because you have had it for a long time really matter? Does that affect your credit report? I would think not.

It does. Length of credit history and credit utilization are factors to create your credit score. The more good history the better. Credit bureaus are also looking for your balance-to-limit ratio. An example of how closing a credit account could hurt you would be if you had 2 credit card accounts. One had a balance of $8k on a $10k limit and the other had $0 balance on $10k limit; so your ratio is $8k balance on $20k allowed/approved (credit utilization is 40%). If you close that $0 balance account your ratio goes to $8k balance on $10k allowed/approved (credit utilization is 80% - high) which is not good for your credit score.

That being said I've closed one credit card account in the past, but i didn't have any balances on any other credit cards and the account i was closing had an annual fee when i wasn't using the card.

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Navy Federal ($5 minimum balance for the last 4 years for access to loan rates)

I do all of my stuff through NFCU and if you have an account there I dont know why you are dicking around with anyone else.  Just consolidate your shit there and have one less thing to worry about in your life.  Done, easy.

Every time I've done a car loan or some other thing through another bank I've regretted it, the service aspect is always atrocious where with NFCU just walk into a branch and they bend over backwards to help you.

That's what we've done with NWFCU (northwest Federal). Anyone can join that CU and they don't seem their mortgages, which I find nice. The money market rates aren't great, but they're not bad and there's a local branch of I ever need to get to one.