Why FICO Score is a Stupid Score and Credit Cards are the Devil
Despite a great credit score of zero, tons of savings, and cash in the bank, my friend could not get approved for renting an apartment.
A friend of mine shared with me the fact that when he tried to apply for an apartment, he could not qualify due to having no credit whatsoever. He had always paid cash for things his entire life, has always lived way below his means, and has always put his money in the bank, even in CDs where he accumulated great gains in interest. He did all of this against the grain of what most Americans, including myself, have always done. As a result, he had tens of thousands of dollars in his savings account! He even has a steady, good paying job. Despite all of these great financial points, he could not qualify for renting an apartment because his FICO score was zero. How messed up is the renting, financing, and banking industry to require an I Love Debt metric such as FICO in order to allow one to rent a place to live?! Why couldn't they just look at how much freaking cash he had in his bank accounts? His income? His bank statements? No, says Mr. FICO Banker Shithead. You must have a credit history created by the use of debt instruments like car loans and credit cards in order to qualify for renting a place to live.
My quick assumption is that Congress has been lobbied so damn hard by the FICO corporate greedy banker bastards for requiring such a metric that all Americans are forced to have some sort of credit history driven by debt and credit cards and loans in order to be qualified for a necessity such as renting for a place to live.
By the way, FICO is a registered trademark of a company that invented this score. It is not even a generic, government-agency-created metric of credit worthiness. It is a corporate invention. Those who live and die trying to raise their FICO score to the highest possible metric of 850 is a complete sucker. The best FICO score is still zero. I say fuck them all and take the power back and refuse credit from the outset! If you are denied a place to rent on the basis of having a zero FICO score, I say alert the media, call your Senator, strike against the rental community. Do whatever it takes to stop the FICO bullshit train.
Now that we know FICO is a Stupid Score, what about credit cards themselves?
One time, a banker told me to start using my business credit card for all my expenses and purchases because I get rewards points and it's a great way to control expenses (!). I felt a rage coming on and had to really constrain myself from screaming at her what I really wanted to scream; "YOU GREEDY CORPORATE DRONE! ITS DRONES LIKE YOU THAT WE ARE ALL IN CREDIT CARD DEBT AND MAKING YOU BANKS RICHER!!" Instead, I calmly, but sternly told her No Thank You! I have $10,000 credit card debt because of that and have been diligently working on paying down that debt and eventually paying it off. Credit cards are the devil, and a complete trap, and I will never, ever use a credit card, ever again, after I pay it all off. They have all been cut up and you should do the same. Debt is for stupid people." With that, she shut up and had the classic blank look on her face. I love it!
All my life, I was under the impression of having to use credit cards for everything in order to build up my credit history. I diligently used my first MasterCard, from age 17 onward, and paid it off each and every month. I used the card faithfully, with the proud knowledge that I was building my credit and doing a smart financial thing for my future. The problem with this, is it was all too easy to get deep into the hole to where I eventually was unable to pay off my card in full each month. I began to accrue massive interest on the card, so I opened up another, did balance transfers, then another, then another...
The problem with credit cards is they are just too damn convenient. It is way too easy to slide that piece of plastic in a credit card payment machine to buy anything the credit line will allow you to buy. It's easy to splurge on $400-500 shopping trips, buy a $2000 TV, buy $1000 pieces of furniture thinking you can easily just pay it off later. Then, whenever I actually built up cash in the bank account, it always quickly got depleted in having to keep up with minimum payments.
So, do yourself a Financial Favor, and avoid credit cards like the plague. Henry Ford once said that financing was dumb and should never be done. It wasn't until something like the 1950s that Ford Motor Co. offered financing on new vehicle purchases - and it was only so they can keep up with Chevrolet who started doing it first. Think for a moment. People actually paid for their cars with cash before the 1950s! Who says we need credit cards and credit lines?
Once again, FICO Score is a Stupid Score, and credit cards are the Devil/plague/anti-christ/Apocalypse/disease/death machine/whatever!