Do college students choose their major in college based on their life long dreams or by which jobs will earn them the most money after graduating? Some students still follow their dreams, but for many college students, following your dreams is not always the driving factor in choosing a college major or profession after graduating. The task of repaying student loans and other debts can be a daunting challenge. Because of the pressure students face, many pick degrees in fields with jobs that have the potential to earn them high incomes immediately after college. Some students choose those jobs without regard to whether it is following their exact dream career path or not. The information below can help a college student with their research in finding the top earning entry-level jobs.
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Categories: Infographic
Black Friday is a great time of the year. It is great for retailer who may finally see a profit after months of operating in the red, and Black Friday is a great time for consumers who are out to buy a bargain. Black Friday is crazy time of the year where the stores are packed, the parking lot is gridlocked, and people are camping out in the snow for the best deals of the year. Black Friday is a time when normal and levelheaded people tend to go crazy in order to save a little money on some gadget and to hunt for that all elusive perfect holiday gift.
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Categories: Infographic
While it may seem like a simple question, the fact of the matter is that there are several different issues that go into determining whether adding a credit card to your portfolio will hurt your credit score or not. There is both a short-term and a long-term consequence to applying for a new credit card, and you want to know ahead of time what kind of impact you’re likely to see.
Here are the things to consider if you want to apply for a new credit card, but you’re also hoping to be able to improve your credit score:
- Getting a new credit card will make your credit score dip – briefly. Whenever you apply for credit, the creditor does a credit check on you. This kind of credit check is one small component of your credit score. The more credit inquiries you have on your file, the lower your score. These purge off rather quickly, however, and as long as you’re not applying for several credit cards all at once you should probably be all right.
- Longevity of your credit accounts plays a role in your credit score, too. Around 15 percent of your credit score is determined by the age of your credit accounts. If you’re closing old accounts to open new ones, it’ll make your score dip. Likewise, an account that you’ve opened just recently doesn’t have as much weight as an account that’s several years old.
- Your behavior after you get the card is key. The biggest percentage – around 35 percent – of your credit score is determined by your bill-paying history. Whether you get a new credit card or not, making sure that your bills are paid on time every time is the most important factor in your credit score. If you get a new card and don’t pay the bill, your score is going to suffer.
- Credit ratio plays a role, as well. The amount of your credit limits compared to the balance on your cards is a significant part of your credit score. If you open a new card and then don’t add much of a balance to it, you’re lowering that ratio, which will most definitely improve your credit score over the long haul, even if you take a temporary dip after the application process.
Categories: News
If you’re hoping to improve your credit score, one of the things that you need to be especially concerned about is your ratio of debt to your available credit. The fact of the matter is that this simple ratio amounts to about a third of your overall credit score, and is second only to your bill paying history in determining what your credit score will be.
One of the obvious ways to affect this number is to pay down some of your debt. In fact, that’s the fastest way to do so. However, you can also improve that number by increasing the amount of available credit. While applying for a new credit card will temporarily impact your credit score in a negative way, over the long haul you’re better off having that higher credit limit.
One of the natural questions, then, is what kind of credit card you should apply for.
Still, the fact of the matter is that it’s not the type of credit card that matters when it comes to your credit score. The fact is that an unsecured revolving credit account – such as you have with a regular credit card or a department store credit card – is essentially the same type of credit.
What really matters in regard to your credit card is a series of factors, including:
- How you pay your bill. If you pay your credit card or department store card bill late, it’s going to hurt your credit score, plain and simple.
- Your limit compared to your usage. The best credit card, from your credit score’s perspective, is the one that you don’t carry a significant balance on. You want to keep your credit utilization at about 30 percent of your credit limit.
Now, the type of debt you carry is important in regard to your credit score. As much as 10 percent of your credit score depends on whether you’ve got revolving credit or whether you’ve got credit for things like mortgages. Whether that revolving credit comes from Citbank or Macy’s really doesn’t matter to your credit score.
The most important difference between these kinds of cards is going to be the interest rate you pay, and that’s most definitely worth looking at.
Categories: Advice
One of the unfortunate realities of the recent economic recession has been that many people find themselves no longer able to afford the homes that they live in. It could be that they’ve lost a job and therefore the ability to pay their mortgage payment, or it could be that they’ve lost so much value in the equity in their homes that it’s no longer worth it, financially, to continue to pay for the home. Regardless of the cause, many people find themselves facing some tough decisions. Often, that is a decision between having their home foreclosed, or selling their home for less than what they owe in a short sale. The real problem is that neither of these is a particularly attractive option, and both can be equally detrimental to their credit score.
Now, to be sure, the FICO formula isn’t publically available. You can’t know for sure how a short sale would affect your credit score without actually going through it, and at that point there’s no way to directly compare what would happen with a foreclosure.
You can be fairly certain that a person who has a 780 credit score will lose between 140 and 160 points for a short sale or a foreclosure. The penalty for these kinds of problems is more significant when you have a high credit score to begin with. If you have excellent credit, you’ll wind up with subprime credit or credit that’s nearly subprime once the short sale or foreclosure goes through.
The other problem is that you can’t really be sure how long it will take for your credit score to repair itself after a short sale or foreclosure. You’ll start to climb back out into good territory after a few months, but it may take several years – as long as seven years – for you to get back to your peak credit score.
Finally, be careful with agreements you sign with the lender. Sometimes, a short sale agreement won’t talk about what happens to any unpaid debt, and others specifically hold you accountable.
Categories: Credit Score
