Blogging Away Debt

Credit Scores – Apparently They Are Growing in Importance

I remember way back when I first started blogging about our debt. I was contacted by a debt company that deals with debt settlement. I asked the gentleman who contacted me flat out…what will happen to my credit score if I did this?

He skirted around the issue a bit, and basically said, “What do you need a credit score for anyway?”

Thinking about it a little bit, maybe he had a point. If you want to avoid debt and obtaining new debt, who cares about your credit score? Go ahead and tank it since you won’t be trying to obtain new credit.

But wait a minute. Some employers pull credit reports on potential employees.

“…most people also don’t know that cellphone companies, landlords, and home insurers often use the scores as part of customer background checks.”
[Via USNews.com]

Somehow, having a good credit score has been linked with having good personal responsibility. Since you have a good score, you are a good person. Of course, I don’t buy that for a minute. A number like that can only tell you so much. But companies outside the financial district are using it to judge you. That upsets me more than a little bit.

I told the gentleman with the debt settlement company that I wasn’t interested. Debt settlement wasn’t an option for me at that point. We are able to pay off our debt, given some time to do it. Now, if we were facing bankruptcy versus going with a debt settlement company…that would have been a different story.

Since it seems like the number of businesses/companies using your credit score as a type of background check is increasing, I wonder what the future will hold for credit scores. I personally hope the importance of credit scores decreases outside of the financial industry.

Home Sweet Home

by Tricia

Remember how I said I was suffering from high speed internet withdrawal? Well, it was because I was out of town. It’s so hard sometimes because I want to share with everyone what is going on (and in this case how much money we were spending), but I have to stop myself. It’s probably not the best thing to declare publicly that our home is vacant so I hope you understand why I haven’t said anything until now.

We went on a journey to visit our parents. It’s a good ten or eleven hour drive for us. Needless to say, I am exhausted after the drive back and from being busy visiting with everyone. But it was very nice because I only see family about once a year, sometimes more if someone comes to visit us.

This time, we did things a little bit differently. Since we are on a “no spending to get stuff” kick, we bypassed buying trinkets and ended up spending some money for experiences. By that, I mean things like going on a boat ride and going up to the top of a very high tower where I experienced an almost paralyzing fear (more about that later).

I still haven’t tallied all of the travel damage yet, but I don’t think it will be too bad. We did spend one night in a hotel and of course there is the money for gas and food while traveling. We also took the opportunity to buy my husband some new shoes because we were in a big city for part of our trip. The stores around me don’t like to carry his size and the shoes he was wearing had a dime-sized hole right in the bottom of the sole. I’ve never seen someone do that before with a pair of shoes.

As a plus, I did get a huge garbage bag of hand-me-down clothes for my son from my sister-in-law. They will fit my son in a year or so. That was very kind of her to give those to us because it will save us a bit of money.

To be able to visit with my family, well, the trip was worth every penny we spent. I’m looking forward to being debt-free so perhaps we can visit more often than once a year. That’s something else I can hold onto to help keep us motivated.