Finance/insurance

c
cheri song
Dec 18, 2022
Making your first Credit Card in United States! My tips
When making your first credit card, it's important to take the first step correctly to save a lot of heartache, time, and effort in the future. I was just thinking about writing a little list of things to keep in mind to help you in getting that first credit card. Getting the first credit card is the hardest step for most people. Afterwards, getting better cards that provide more signup bonus or loyalty rewards should be a matter of time. Here's my tips: 1. There’s no connection between your worth and your credit card issuance People keep making the mistake of continuously asking the credit card company to issue them a credit card after being rejected out of spite, even though they aren’t ready and the company had good reason to reject them. Whether it be a test, credit card issuance, or confessing to a crush, rejection is a nasty feeling. However, credit card issuance in United States has nothing to do with your worth as a human being or your pride. It is actually a mostly automated, mechanical process. There’s no reason to be slighted at the company just because your card’s been rejected. You don’t need to waste energy feuding with them, so just going through all the card options and applying to all of them one by one just actually makes it more difficult for your first credit card to be issued. 2. Giving up after a rejection If you thought “Well I don’t need a credit card anyways, I can just pay for what I want with Debit” after being rejected,” well that’s actually a similar kind of mindset as above, just expressed differently. To give up on having a credit card in United States is to not only give up on whole host of mileage benefits, but also to give up on creating an easy source of credit rating—which you would need later when taking out a loan, mortgage, or buying a car. You are going to be dealing with it anyways, so you might as well start early. 3. Credit Score isn’t everything A lot of people here probably are completely new to the whole American credit card system, but a lot of people probably also know the basic knowhow of credit card issuance These people tend to ask: “My credit score is 700, so why am I not getting approved for a sapphire preferred credit card?” or “My credit score is 680. Can I still get approved for freedom card?” These kinds of questions assume that credit score is the absolute objective standard through which credit card issuance is determined/ In my experience, though, whether that credit score is the FICO score or the FAKO score (which you can check in freecreditreport.com), you shouldn’t be overconfident or underconfident of what that credit score might mean to the issuing companies. It’s not like your credit score is your GPA or your exam scores. In other words it’s never really the case that you can say “people with over 700 credit rating can of course get a sapphire preferred card!” or “people above 680 can definitely get a freedom card!” Actual card issuance has a lot of other factors in play such as their income, pattern of card usage, relationship with the issuing company, length of credit history etc. Credit score should only be considered a rough tool for tracking reliability. In addition, for immigrants and foreign exchange students, whose credit history isn’t very long, your credit score is probably not a good reflection of your financial history anyways. The banks know this and you should always keep this in mind. In an ideal world your credit score should be a perfect indicator created after careful enumeration of the length of your transaction history, income, etc etc, but in reality your credit score will be pretty high as long as you don’t have anything explicitly negative in your history such as non-payment. So if you only put your trust in your credit score and keep asking for a card to be issued, you are liable to getting rejected. 4. Credit is a long term battle. There’s no need to take out any loans on purpose. There’s some people who advise that the fastest way to raise credit score is to take out loans on purpose. There are some people who can easily pay for a car with cash, but purposefully took out a loan with high interest rate to raise their credit rating. After they make a credit card, some people who believe in this even refuse to pay the owed money entirely, only making minimum payments. If you carry this debt for few months while paying interest, apparently your credit score rises rapidly. Well, of course, I’m sure the banks do genuinely love clients who pay through their nose on interest payments to them. But you really don’t need to use such extreme methods to raise your credit score. As long as you keep using your credit card and pay for the full sum without delays, your rating will increase naturally. It takes time either way, so there’s no need to rush.
3
T
T R
Nov 18, 2022
Medical Debt Collection
Hello! I'm currently a student and I'm writing here to get some advice. I missed payment for a medical bill recently and just heard that the hospital sold the account off to a debt collection agency. The reason I missed payment was out of a simple misunderstanding. I checked my account and saw that they billed me for 500 dollars. After dithering for a while, I noticed that the account now had 0 dollars in balance. So I assumed my insurance took care of it. I've been getting some weird calls lately which I assumed were spam calls, and they've been leaving me voice mails in Chinese which I don't understand. I checked the number online later and they turned out to be some kind of debt collection agency? I mean, I pay my credit card bills every month, so I was really confused where I could've accrued a debt, but then I checked the hospital account, where they told me that they handed over my account to a debt collector. There's still about 200 dollars left to pay on the balance. I'm just wondering if this is going to negtiavely impact my credit score. And if so, by how much?
8
jasmin lee
Nov 18, 2022
Should I limit usage of credit card even all owed fees every day?
Hello! I've been using my credit card more often these days, but I make sure I pay for all the outstanding fees on my account every day. I've heard from someone that I still should refrain from spending too much through my credit card, because apparently if I use more than thirty percent of my credit card limit, it impacts my credit utilization ratio which negatively affects my credit rating. The only reason I use my credit card often these days is because I thought that if I keep making little transactions and paying for it immediately, it would boost my credit score. Can anyone tell me if it's true if using the credit card too much negatively affects my credit score even if I pay all outstanding fees before their due date?
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