The balance between paying down debt and savings

[Alan]

We put just about everything on credit cards and pay off the balances each month. Haven't paid a penny of CC interest in the past 25 years. Both our credit scores fluctuate between about 830 to 835, I believe that small shift depends upon how much we've spent that month.

[iris lilies]

I don’t get as high as 800 as I have previously complained about.

But I watch my category go from the highest “excellent” to “very good” to once in a while “good.”
That rating system is deranged.

[rosarugosa]

We're in the same boat as Alan, and with the kitchen project, we will be building up some nice reward points. I belong to Credit Karma, and it's amusing to get their encouraging little notes along the lines of "Way to go, Rosa! You've paid off your big Visa balance," because I pay off all my balances every month. They also sometimes send me emails with helpful advice on paying off our loan. It's a deliberately held, zero-interest loan from our furnace installation of 2018, and of course we're in no hurry to pay it off.

[happystuff]

I pay off our cc every month as well. Cash back, which I never seem to get around collecting, so there is a significant amount there. Need to do something with it... eventually.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I generally pay it off every month but after years of doing that I paid late last month (I think I got real confused about when bills were due because it was one of those 3 paychecks a month months, not the typical 2 paychecks).

I don’t get as high as 800 as I have previously complained about.
But I watch my category go from the highest “excellent” to “very good” to once in a while “good.”
That rating system is deranged.

I don't get as high as 800, but for that you need REAL DEBT, like to have ever had a car loan, a mortgage, maybe student loans (I think my partners score is higher for that, for student loans he is still paying a couple decades after going to school for a grad degree he doesn't use). And nope, I rent and paid cash for cars. I think if fluctuates some for opening up new credit cards/store cards or closing them and I'm not going to worry about that.

[Tradd]

I generally pay it off every month but after years of doing that I paid late last month (I think I got real confused about when bills were due because it was one of those 3 paychecks a month months, not the typical 2 paychecks).



I don't get as high as 800, but for that you need REAL DEBT, like to have ever had a car loan, a mortgage, maybe student loans (I think my partners score is higher for that, a couple decades after going to school for a grad degree he doesn't use). And nope, I rent and paid cash for cars. I think if fluctuates some for opening up new credit cards/store cards or closing them and I'm not going to worry about that.

When I've pulled my free credit reports, it always says to increase my score, I should get a mortgage. That ain't likely to happen!

[happystuff]

When I've pulled my free credit reports, it always says to increase my score, I should get a mortgage. That ain't likely to happen!

Sometimes some things just don't make sense to me and this is one of those things. I don't understand going into debt to increase a credit score.

[sweetana3]

1993 was the last time we had a "real" mortgage. We had a short term loan in 1999 to cover some time on a new house but that is all. Cannot remember financing anything since then. I guess our rating is high due to large CC limits and regular use and payment. But this required several decades of spending much less than earnings and appropriate use of balance. Much harder today.

[Tradd]

I’m still plugging along. I needed new tires ($1K) so I had to rebuild emergency fund from scratch (everything else had been thrown on cc). I added another $1K on top, so $2K in it now. Today was my first regular paycheck with the raise (previous check was retro) so now I know what I’ll be getting each check, I’ll be able to rework my budget.

I had changed Apple One to the premier plan, which is $38/month, includes Apple News+ and Fitness+. Wasn’t using them as much as I thought, so I dropped it down to the individual plan, which gets me Apple Music and my iCloud storage (plus a few other things) for $20/month. I still have the Economist ($21/month).

Cancelled MS 365 renewal for June ($70/yr). The only reason I had it was to have MS Word for my volunteer copy editing with the WI Historical Society. We’ve hit upon me editing a PDF on my iPad with stylus and me marking it up in red. Works much better for all of us and I don’t have to worry about messing up the formatting with any edits and they don’t have to fix formatting. I installed LibreOffice on my Windows laptop, plus I have Apple Pages to use on iPad. There’s always Google Docs, too.

I reupped Weight Watchers ($10/month) as it really helps. I’d really gotten off the wagon when I had the plague in January.

My car insurance (State Farm) was $682 when I renewed a few weeks ago. It’s definitely gone up, but I’ve been with SF since 1991 and I see no reason to change. Every single person I know who changes just for price, ends up in a bad place when they have a claim. I had no issues with my accident December 2022, damage fixed in March 2023. My deductible is $250. Raising it would drop my cost some, but it doesn’t bother me enough to look into it. I can afford the increase. I think insurance was $625 when I renewed in October.

Told landlord I wanted to stay another year (lease renews in early Sept). Might as well just tell him now since I’m not moving!

[Tradd]

I’ve gone back to doing just about all my grocery shopping at Aldi and it really keeps costs down.

I did renew Amazon Prime. I can afford it.