DID YOU KNOW? ECOS Air Purifying Paint is a protective finish that dries to a hard, durable film. Ideal for all interior/exterior walls, furniture, and trim, including use in kitchens and bathrooms. This paint absorbs and neutralizes chemicals and pollutants, solvents and VOCs, for improved indoor air quality. Available in 4 sheens, odorless, non-toxic, and VOC-free. (No, this is not paid advertising!)
DID YOU KNOW? f you have an initial credit card limit of $2,000 and put $1,000 on your card, your utilization rate is 50%. If your limit is bumped up to $4,000, though, and you still spend $1,000, your utilization rate drops to 25%. In turn, your credit score could grow over time, giving you more favorable interest rates on and access to better financial products, like rewards credit cards, mortgages and even home or apartment rentals. Most experts recommend keeping your rate at 30% or lower to maximize your score.
DID YOU KNOW? San Francisco continues to be the most competitive market with a 28% bidding war rate. Las Vegas and Phoenix tied for second with 21% of offers facing a bidding war.
DID YOU KNOW? The average FICO credit score is 706. Here are some tips about CREDIT SCORES….
* Seeking information about your own credit score is always a soft inquiry, and won’t cost you points on your score, unlike a bank – a HARD inquiry – checking your score for a mortgage application.
* Preferably use less than 30% of your available credit each month and ideally less than 10%. Paying off your bills fully every month while fully using your credit is less effective. Raising your credit limit could help keep your percentage of utilization down.
* Keeping a balance on your cards doesn’t help and could set back your financial goals, which are better served by consistently paying off credit-card debt in full.
* Closing an older credit card won’t help your score and it might actually hurt you.
* Every time you open a new credit card – or take out a loan or qualify for a mortgage – the overall average age of our credit takes a hit, and the hard inquiry subtracts more points from your credit score.
* Getting that first credit card is important to building a thicker credit file, and retail cards are often among the easiest to qualify for.
* Shopping around for a mortgage getting multiple credit scores can hurt your credit, but when credit scoring companies see different lenders pulling your credit score around the same time, they bundle multiple requests as a single query. So shop different rates at the exact same time, within 14 days or less.
Late payments, collections, foreclosures and chapter 13 bankruptcies hurt your credit score for 7 years. A chapter 7 bankruptcy will hurt it for 10 years. But, with the exception of the bankruptcies, the impact of the other problems diminishes as the information ages.
* Banks typically won’t report any debit-card activity to credit-reporting companies, but choosing the credit option on your debit-card purchase means the funds could take up to 3 days to post, whereas the debit option means immediate withdrawal.
* 21% of consumers studied in 2012 found errors that resulted in modifications by the credit-reporting firms. Not all credit reports are accurate. So check your credit by regularly looking at your credit report. You are entitled to a free copy of your credit report annually from each of the credit-reporting companies (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax). You can request them at AnnualCreditReport.com or by calling 1-877-322-8228.
