Demystifying the Credit Score

your excitement. This does not hold the same level of thrill for me. But it is a really important topic, and I know that it comes with the territory of talking about frugality and personal finance, and I know I've had friends and family kind of talk about this. Of course, I have a credit score and it has been an important factor and the things I've done in my life.

But yes, I'm glad that we've chosen the word demystifying because it has always seemed like one of those things that you don't really know how your score happens, and don't check it or that will make it bad too, and just try and be good, but you don't really know how to be good and good luck. So this is good. It's good to get into some of the details. Yeah, nobody likes to talk about the credit score. I get

that nobody gets excited about it. I get excited because it is a great way to save money on things like a house or a car. So I love it. And it can also like help you get a job if they check your credit report for some reason. So this is a super important, awfully debated area of personal finance that we are going to really get into shed some light on. So but first, our sponsors. So today's episode is brought to you by another podcast. You've heard

us talk about it. If you like podcasts, you'll definitely want to subscribe to Frugal Living. It's sponsored by brad Steals, one of the longest running deal sites on the internet. It is chock full of savings, have financial tips and stories on how to live better for less. They just started their second season and they're covering a variety of topics who can easily apply to your lifestyle, like when's the best time to buy TVs or flowers and how

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Also brought to you by demystification, like when the Wizard is revealed to be just a regular human, or when you learned that no one actually looks that good. It's just a filter demystification making seemingly daunting things super manageable. Use code Lions and Tigers and Bears to take ten percent off the mystery and scariness of credit scores. Wow, added a little promo code in there. Don't forget the pluses between lions and tigers and bears taking out the

oh my of yes, I love that. So let's start talking about the credit score. So we want to get into what it is, what are the parts of it, and how do we raise it? Because that's all we really care about, right is what is it, why do I need it? And how do I make it better? So our first article is from Experience, which is one of the three major credit bureaus, and it is aptly titled what is a good credit score? So if you want a good read on credit scores, this is a

riveting one. Well it's just really good s c e O because you know, that's what everybody is Google searching, like, yeah, okay, here's my credit score? What what's a good one? How do I know where I fall? And if you are going to find out, Like, if you want to know what a good credit score is, you want to either hear from FICO, Experience, TransUnion, or Equifax. Those are really the foe most important names that you need to know. Experience, Equifax,

and TransUnion are the three major credit bureaus. That means like where your transactions and everything are reported to. Doesn't mean all of your transactions, all of your like debt stuff and credit stuff. They're not always reported to all three credit bureaus. Sometimes they just use one or two. But FICO is actually the name of the score. That's the name of the credit score, and there's also advantage score. But most banks and everybody if they're not using their

own proprietary credit scoring method. They're using FICO, And so what FICO stands for, it's just fair Isaac and Company. They're a data analytics company. That's it. That's so you would think that it was more of a title versus

just a company. I mean, if you think about it, this like all finances business, So like you're trying I mean theoretically, you're trying to increase your like quote unquote personally you know, business or stature or whatever by like getting something you technically can't afford with the cash you have, which is not a bad thing, but you're just like trying to get ahead. You need to take out some kind of loan, so you go to a bank, which is also a business, and the bank tries to figure

out if you're credit worthy. So they go to a third party business Fair Isain Company or Equifax, TransUnion Experience, whatever, and that data company figures out if you're credit worthy. So it's all like a business. It's not correct me if I'm wrong, But in my experience, when I've gotten a credit score for whether I'm applying to live in an apartment or when we went through our home buying process. We get the scores from at least two of those different places. I think for us it was our FICO

and Experience scores, and they were different. I mean they were within relatively the same range, but they weren't the same number. For us, we were told we can use the higher number to kind of report on and show what our credit is. I don't know if yeah, yeah, you would affirm that general. Yeah, I mean so to my and I'm not a credit expert. I would love to be when it's it's I think it's super interesting. But these credit reporting bureaus use the FICO data to

determine their own score. So it is the FICO score whether you're going whether you're getting it from Experience, Equifax, for trans Union, it's still called a FICO score. When you hear credit score, they're interchangeable or Vantage score. That's a different data company. So but yeah, you and they and they for some reason, they just translate the data in different ways, and they will all three of them will show you something different. But that's why they have ranges.

So they have like poor, fair, good, excellent, and the range is from three hundred to eight fifty. So a good FICO score technically starts at six seventy, but most experts usually agree it's probably around seven hundred. Like at seven hundred plus is when you start seeing like the best rates possible. So an excellent starts at eight hundred, and it's really once you hit eight hundred, there's no

advantage to trying to get your score any higher. I see people on the internet that are like going for this elusive eight fifty, and it's like, why, You're just You're just trying to play a game. At that point, it's just a competent. Yeah. I just want to be able to say I'm perfect, and they've got another number to show that I'm perfect. Yeah. Good. I mean, they just need to believe that they are worthy without a

good without a perfect credit score. So but so, I mean, most Americans do have a good FICO score or better. So this isn't something where people are trying to hold you back or anything. Most Americans do have a good FICO score. But if you can get your FICO score two at or around eight hundred, then that's where you save the most money, whether you're trying to get a mortgage, whether you're refinancing or getting credit cards. I mean, you can get starting at seven hundred, you can start to

get the good travel hacking credit cards. So that's kind of why the credit score is important for us. Yeah. So yeah, and then now now that we know Fico, no TransUnion, Experience Equifax. I've been writing about this stuff for years, and I still confuse Experience and Equifax. Um, it's right, I always remember one and not the other. I always remember TransUnion though, So we're gonna skip overlooking

advantage score. Jill tell us about what effects our credit score. Yes, this article from Experience goes through some of the top things, which for me was really helpful as I learn along with my other frugal friends, what all goes into a credit score. There are some things that can be I think elusive. There are some things are like all right within a couple of points, like how is this completely

figured out? But there are some basic tenants to this, including payment history, meaning are you may being on time payments to any of your credit card accounts or loans mortgage? Do you have missing payments? Are there accounts that are have gone to collections agencies? Have you filed bankruptcy in the past. All of these things can affect payment history.

Which affects credit score. Another component is credit usage, which is how many accounts you have that have balances, and then how much you owe and the portion of your credit limit that you're using on all of those revolving accounts. So meaning if you've got a credit card that has a max limit of fifteen dollars, how much the percentage of that that you utilize in reality determines credit usage.

Then you've got length of credit history. So a lot of this, as we'll talk about later on too, is just playing the long game and patients that it does take time to build up a good credit score. Sometimes people who are younger, if you're just starting out into adulthood, you might have a poor credit score. It's not necessarily

reflective of you've done something bad. A poor credit score can just be reflective of no credit you've just not interacted with loans and credit card accounts, that kind of a thing. So how long of a credit history that you've built up, and then all of those other components that we've talked about too, how you've interacted with those payments and the percentage of credit that you've utilized throughout time, and then the types of accounts that you that you have.

Some people might also call this a credit mix. This could include installment accounts, which are your car loan, any personal loans, mortgage, and revolving accounts, So those would be the things that you're kind of utilizing regularly, like a credit card or a line of credit. And so how you interact with and manage both of those types of accounts and the responsibility that you're showing with each of

those um plays into your credit score. And then finally, recent activity, so this considers whether you've recently applied or opened new accounts or closed accounts. Whatever your recent activity has been plays into your overall credit score. So those are the five things that make up the FICO and the vantage score, and so they both take different approaches to it, like evaluating the importance of each. But again we're just going to focus on FICO because that is

the main thing that banks use. So let's like dive a little bit deeper into all five of these. So the first payment history that is most important, so literally it's just make your payments on time in full every month. It is waited at thirty five and of your credit score, and so it's most important is what banks and stuff will look at most because obviously they want to make sure that you will pay them back. And then the

rest the last what is it? Three are kind of just like icing on the cake, But it's really the payment history is really the most important. And then credit usage. But I would say this is another part of the long game. Like you can't just open a bunch of accounts and like make your payment history like longer. You have to, you know, do the mortgage thing, do the auto loan thing, do the credit card thing, and do it wisely for a long amount of time to get

to an excellent score. I'm putting you on the spot, but would you advise somebody to do an auto loan for this reason? It would be if you, like never had a student loan and don't have a mortgage, then it could be wise for you to have an auto loan for like a period of time. I think the most more important than that. That would just honestly, so many people have student loans, and so many people want to buy a house. It's not That's not where I

would put my focus. I would put my focus on getting a credit card and keeping that open and letting that build up your length of time and we'll talk about that in a second, but that's probably where I would put my focus. Okay, So the second most important part of your credit score is your credit usage. This is weighted at thirty percent of your credit score. What makes up a big component of how you get your score.

So this has to do with how much available credit you have and how much of that available credit you utilize. You could literally figure out your actual percentage of use edge and they say you want it to be no more than thirty. I think we'll talk about that later too in the next article. But this also makes up of your credit score. So if you're utilizing a lot of your available credit, this could indicate that you're over extended, and banks might interpret this to mean that you're a

higher risk of defaulting. So again to use that example of let's say you have a credit limit of fifteen thou dollars and you are kind of maxing that out every month. That is going to impact your score significantly. Again, because your score is indicative of how well you interact with some of these loans and payments, how how financially responsible you are according to ICO. So making sure that that ratio that there's a bigger percentage of ratio between

what's available to you and what you utilize. Yeah, I think this is the most the least understood part of the FICO score because people see that thirty percent and they say, oh, I need to have somewhere between ten and of credit in order to keep a good credit score, And that is a miss that's a misnomer. It'stent max, not keep thirty percent ad or around. And so you

should never keep a balance on your credit card. There's debate obviously on the topic, but the way that cards are set up to be paid is that you're the day that your credit card will report to the credit bureaus is different from the date you are build, and so if you are build on the billing date, you're not going to pay any interest for what you just accrued.

But if you still have a little bit of balance on the day that they report to the credit bureaus, they're going to see that you had activity, Like the credit bureaus will see that without the credit card company charging you interest for keeping that revolving balance. So don't worry about like if you're paying your credit card off every month and they're like, oh, they're gonna see zero every month and they're gonna think I'm not using credit. No,

they see you paid your bill every month. They see you know what's on there, and that you paid your bill, that you're on time. The credit card company will report that you are on time. They will get that. So don't worry. Don't pay for a higher credit score. It defeats the purpose. Your credit score helps you save money, so paying for it is not wise good word. So the next part is average length of credit history. And so if the first two are highly weighted, this one's

a midweight but it is important. It just takes the average length of every loan or card that you have and gives you an app like how long it's been open, and gives you an average length of history. And so we realized the importance of this one firsthand because we churned credit cards for travel hacking, not like every month, but every every three or four months. And so Travis actually has a credit score of eight hundred. That's excellent. So we don't try and we're not trying to get

any better than that. But he was denied for his last two credit cards because and he was fine before, but we refinanced our home in July of last year, and so we we didn't realize that, um because we close cards like before the year's up, so we don't have to pay the annual fee. Again, he doesn't have any like credit card history like I do. I opened a card at eighteen, so like I can churn every every other month and virtually no difference on my score.

But because we refinanced our home and we took those several years off of the his credit history, that really impacted his average length of credit history. So right now it's eight months and he literally just got denied for a card last week. So but everything else is excellent. How did that take years off his credit history? Like if he had still previously had cards, did they not see that? Because we closed the cards before a year and so he didn't have a full year on the

other card that he had. And now I mean, he only has eight months of credit history according to FICO, he only has eight months of credit history because when we closed one loan for our first mortgage and refinanced that made that started a new loan, so that credit history throughout his adult years not had a credit card for longer than a year, and we just didn't think about it because we didn't start travel hacking until we had had our home for almost a year, so he

had almost a year of you know, on a loan and that was that was our only loan at the time. We didn't start travel hacking until we paid off all our debt, so we started with a year's worth of credit history and good credit. So so even with a high credit score, they're still looking at what makes up that credit score and making their decision off of that. Are we able to see, as like the consumers, what

the different percent like where we're weighted with it. So you can sign up for credit Karma actually and they will tell you and this is how I figured it out that he has like excellent credit, but and it'll show you your different um like all the five factors and give you a little color. If it's green, then it's good. And then under length of credit it's red and it says eight months. So we're gonna wait until that is at least a year before we try again

for him. Okay, nice, thanks are answering all my questions on I It has to do more with the credit cards more so than a mortgage or car loans. So that's so that's the different type of credit. Um speaking to credit mix, it's so interesting to realize that even if you have a good score, they're still going to look at the different makeups of that score and make their decision off of that. So you do kind of want to look good in each of these categories, Yeah,

you really really do. So the other ones that also play into your overall credit score again is your type of credit and new credit both carry ten percent weight, so not important enough to lose sleep over obviously, but you would like to see various types of loans, and they don't want to see a lot of credit applications altogether, which is kind of what you're indicating with Travis and Jen like kind of yeah, this rotating thing, well not a lot of time, but also that you've got different types.

So that's why if you're shopping for a mortgage or a car loan, you have the option to get pre approved and you can do that as many times as you want to get the best deal without that affecting your score. So no, that you can do that, and I think that that's a thing that has changed too. Like I used to hear, don't check your score. It affects your score, and now they've changed that where yeah,

if you know what's happening, it's so funny. All the things our parents told us growing up, or other people told us growing up their finance related are so negligible now, yet we still believe them and they're and they're not important anymore because technology has allowed so many advances and taken the things that used to be like really annoying and made them convenient. And the credit score is one

of them. So you still your credit score um from the actual bureau is free once a year, that's always been. But you can do like a regular credit check at credit Karma and that doesn't affect You can do that whenever. It's not an official report, but you can do that whenever, and that's free, that doesn't affect your score. Pre approval for loans doesn't affect your score. Like they don't want to see you have like twenty applications for credit in one month. That's kind of like they want you to

keep that down. But one every three months they don't really care about. All right, that is this one. So you guys all know what a credit score entails. So I guess we maybe should have we should have also defined credit report because that's different from the credit score. Your credit score is on your credit report and the things that are on your credit report determine your credit score,

so they are different things. And we will talk about the credit report a little bit in this next article from the Balance and it is ten ways to improve your credit score, and we won't go through all ten, but they are really good ways. Again, improving your credit score is a long game. So if you don't have any deliquencies or you know you're going good, then most of the time it's just keep paying those bills on

time and just you know, keep going maintain right. Like it's not there's no secret to growing like by fifty points in a month. That's just not the point. And uh yeah, anybody that tells you they can do that is lying. So the first one on here is definitely

it's get a copy of your credit report. And then I'm also going to combine that with the other one that's dispute any errors, because that's why you get a copy of your credit report is so that you can make sure and you want to get a copy of your credit report from each of the major bureau so experience Equifax, TransUnion. You need one from each of those and then you'll see usually they are the same for all three. It's not common, but it's not uncommon that

there will be errors. Don't expect them, but don't be surprised if you find one, and you can get the full official report from each of those bureaus at annual credit report dot com once a year, or like I said before, you can just check at credit Carma whenever, and honestly, like I feel like credit carm is good enough, and then if you see something weird on Credit Karma, then get your annual credit report, but definitely do it at least once a year. So if you find an

an accuracy, you're going to have to dispute it. If you see it on multiple reports, you're actually gonna have to dispute it at each bureau. So if you see it on two reports, you're just gonna report it to those two bureaus. If you just see it on one, you only have to do it at one, or if you see it on all three, unfortunately, you have to do it at all three. But the way you do that is that each bureau has a dispute center on its website so all this can be done online. It's

very easy. You don't have to pay somebody to do it, and so you can literally just google Equifax Dispute Center or TransUnion Dispute Center and you will find it. It It will be the first thing on Google. But yeah, so that's how you dispute any errors. And then also if you get any like if you have any delinquencies that you pay off and you see one of those like negative dings on your credit report but it says paid in full, you can actually get that taken off, or

you can attempt to. So you can write what's called a goodwill letter and ask the bureau to take off anything like any of those paid in full delinquencies off of your off of your credit report. And we're gonna I'm gonna put a link to a sample goodwill letter in the show notes if you want to see one of those. But that's the most important, that's the easiest thing. If you're going to improve your credit score by leaps and bounds very quickly, this is the most important way

to do it. But not everybody has these. This is just like if you have errors or paid off delinquencies, it's a good way it's good to know where you're starting from. I mean similar to when we talk about budgets and tracking your spending, like this is the equivalent to that. What are we working with right, what is going on? What with our score? Is the report accurate?

And then go from there. So another thing that they say to improve your score if that's your aim in this again not talking necessarily to those who have a great score and are just a maintenance mode, but they recommend avoiding new credit card purchases and opening new cards.

So new credit card purchases will raise what they call your credit utilization rate, the ratio of your balance to your limit, and what we talked about earlier, so we don't want to go beyond thirty percent ratio credit utilization rate of what is our credit limit and how much of that are we utilizing. So be aware of your credit limit, how much of that you're spending, and don't make those new purchases. Keep that percentage of credit utilization rate low. And also opening up new cards can also

impact your credit score. So if you if you've not got a great credit score, opening up multiple accounts at once is not going to be a great idea. Yeah, absolutely so The next recommendation is to leave accounts open. And so this is for that credit length history. So if you get a credit card at eighteen and you just leave that open, that is going to build your credit length history over over your lifetime. So that's what I did, and I didn't I didn't know That's what

I was like. I didn't know that's what it would do for me. I just thought my parents never had credit cards, and I'm smarter than my parents because I'm eighteen, so I'm gonna get a credit card. That was the reasoning behind that financial decision. I've been wise from a young age. It's always good to say I'm smarter than others. But thankfully that card does not have an annual fee, and so I've had it open since I was eighteen, and that has like solidified my credit history length um.

And so I think your first step if you're just starting out with building credit is to get a no annual fee card and just leave it open. Make one put one bill on auto pay for that credit card, um, whether it's paid monthly or quarterly or whatever, and just let it run. Or if you've chase, I don't, I don't put any purchases on that card anymore. But because I have Chased and I have other Chase cards, it considers like my account still active and it's not closing

the card I don't use. But some credit card companies, if I didn't use Chase and I never use that card, they might just close it on me. And you don't want to risk that, so literally open up the card, just put one bill on auto pay and just leave it there. But you don't want to do one with an annual fee because again you don't want to pay for a higher credit score. That's like not the point.

So yeah. Or and secured cards if you can't get a regular credit card, then a secured card is where you put money onto the card or you put you give the bank like two hundred dollars and that makes your limit two hundred dollars, so something like that. So maybe you have like a ten dollar bill you want to put on auto pay for that and you give the bank a hundred and twenty and then that is covering for the year for that card. So yeah, it was a that's a big thing. And then don't don't

close the accounts. Yeah, again, if there's no annual if there is close it if you're not going to use it anymore and it has an annual fee, then there's other ways to increase your scored that like you said, jend, don't pay for that score. The next tip is to pay off your debt. So, as we've mentioned, your payment history makes up thirty of your credit score, so do

not pay to increase your credit score. The point of good credit is to save you money on loans and credit card rewards, so paying interest on revolving credit card debt does not make sense. So definitely this advice of frugality and becoming debt free still remains. Definitely, pay off that debt. Mm hmmm for me. The last one on this list is get professional help. So this is a last resort option, but it is an option. I don't want you to be afraid of it. Again, don't pay

someone to help you clean up your credit. Like these are all things that you can do yourself, but if you do have impulse control problems or if you just need somebody, you just need help, there are plenty of nonprofit credit counselors that offer debt management plans that can help. I was, I was on the phone with a listener

and she signed up for one of these things. I was like, tell me you were experience, and she was like, it really just helped, like put everything on one payment for me and like made it easier mentally for me to get over the hump, Like it puts somebody else in charge. And it was a weight lifted. And so yeah, I like I understood that it's not something I would do because I'm a nerd and like I like to do this stuff myself. But sometimes, like if you're not

a nerd, that's okay. If you have too much stuff on your plate and you just need that weightlifted, that mental load off, you can definitely find a nonpro fit credit counselor and a debt management plan through them. So definitely it has to be nonprofit. Yeah, get help, but doesn't have to be expensive help, right, And I mean, yeah, it doesn't have to Yeah I have to cost you at all. Yeah I'm pretty sure, Like I'm not I'm not sure what the cost was, but I'm pretty sure

it did not cost her. That's so great. Yeah, help is available. And then the last thing We've talked about it already, but just being patient, this isn't going to happen overnight. We can't find out we've got a low credit score yesterday and have it increased tomorrow. This is a long game, so there are very few things we can do to build our credit fast. But doing some of the things that we've just listed out, you know,

in these last ten minutes, that will help. Have your sights on all of these five areas with a particular focus on. Yeah, the payment history and you're the ratio of what you utilize in your line of credit. That'll help. Yeah, you know what else will help? It helps me. Every week it's the bill of the week. That's right, It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe

a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week. Hi, my name is Mary Kate and I actually just graduated from college, and my bill of

the week is my dad's bill. Because he fully explained everything about paying off my college leans and that they're starting in a month and calming me down after me freaking out about sending them and helping me figure out how to pay them off in about five years is my goal. So yeah, that is my bill of the week. I hope you guys are having a great week and love them life. I love you both. High Bill, your dad, Amen, Amen, Bill, given that sage dad advice. Oh, nothing like Dad Bill

to talk you off the ledge and make it. See Dad Bill, Dad Bill, My dad named Bill. Oh, I'm so glad. These are the ones that I live for, is when there's an actual person named Bill. So thanks Mary Kate, and congratulations on graduating and having a plan for how you're going to pay down that debt and actually listening to your dad, because not many young people listen to their parents. And as a new parent, I'm

starting to really appreciate that. Yes, Oh, it was your rebellion of your parents, Jen that led you to get a credit card, led me to this life. All right, here's our second bill, High Frugal friends. This is Carla, and my favorite bill is the bill my employer has to pay me for unused sick time every year. Any hours accumulated over the allotted amount I get paid for at the end of the year. It almost adds up to a full extra paycheck. It's the best thing to

start a new year with. Bye yes, Carla, Carla, that's amazing. That is a great bill. I love the bills that are paid to us a little bit more than like the bills that I pay. I'm going to be honest. And what an amazing incentive that your company does. I'm not sure that I've heard of that policy before, but it benefits them too, because that means you're showing up for work. It probably means that it's an incentive for

you to take care of yourself. It's like a win win win across the board for eating well and exercising and showing up and then getting paid extra. Washing your hands, washing your hands. We've all so much recently about how not to get sick a man. I love it. That's awesome, Carla. I Travis got his sick time paid to him when he left his employer, but that would have been cool to receive it the first of the year. So kudos

to your company for being really cool. If you want to submit your bill of the week, visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill. Leave us a bill again, whether it's a person named Bill or bills paid to you, bills you're paying. We love to hear him. And now it's time for Jill's favorite time of the week, her real favorite time of the week. Round Round, Round, round, Round. So typically we get really vulnerable and honest in this area, but I wanted to give Jill a break this week.

Thank you. I'm resting, I'm resting the vulnerability, and I'm protecting my vulnerability this week. Yeah, that's like, that's that sounds like a trendy term. Is that thing? Is that something the kids are doing right now? Protecting their vulnerability? It's something I advise people to do as a counselor good. Okay, vulnerability without protection leads to exploitation. Say that again, say it more time. Vulnerability without protection leads to exploitation. I

want that on a on a bumper sticker. Yeah, vulnerability is good and beautiful. It's nothing we should be ashamed of. But it does require protection Otherwise, in the hands of the wrong people, it can be exploited. Oh my gosh, that's like hashtag social media. Yea, oh my god. Um, Okay, that's not that's not what we're talking about. Sliding around though, that we are protecting vulnerability, but because we are I

love that. Um okay, so we're just gonna talk about some tips, like our personal tips with credit that weren't talked about in the articles. Um So, my favorite is called Experience Boost and it is a free service, but it only works for experience. Hence it's called experience Boost. So if the bank is looking at the experience score and they tend to jill you actually like reminded me of this. If they look at two scores, will take the higher one. So if one of those scores is experienced,

this could really work for you. And it's a free service and you sign up for it and it when you sign up, it will count bills like your phone utilities streaming services toward payment history, so you can have more payment history. You can get that boost on things you're already making. So this is definitely great. If you are a renter, then you can I don't I don't know if it counts rent it would probably say that, but you know, phone utilities streaming can definitely boost your

credit score if you count those. That is a really helpful tip, especially for those, yeah, who don't have a lot of credit or aren't really engaging with credit cards, but still need a good credit score for maybe these other larger purchases like a house. Even our debt free folks, we still oftentimes can't pay for a house out of pockets. So having a good credit score does apply to yeah, most of us. My tip which she helped me with, Jen, I'm just being real all, let that be the vulnerable

part of this lightning round. So don't pay off a loan within six months of buying a house. So if you do plan to buy a house in the next six months even to a year, don't pay off any lingering loans that you have within those six months of like settlement date where you're going to have mortgage lenders be looking at your credit score and all of that. This could diminish that score or be a hindrance if you've got some of those loans paid off. So yeah,

that's really just like for a car loan. Sometimes people ask me, should I pay off my car loan before I get a mortgage, And I'm like, well, if it's been within six months, just keep it. Stash that cash because closing an account, like we said earlier, closing account does lower your credit score for a time. It's just a time, it's not a big deal. But if you're trying to buy a house like pretty soon, don't, I mean, you just need every advantage you can get, so like,

don't don't do it right then. But otherwise I'm fully for paying off cars and student loans, so right then, that's the lightning round. Very tips, tips, tips, tips, tips, tips, All right, thanks so much for listening, and thank you for your awesome fun frugal reviews. Um like this one from doodle Gal. Fun and Frugal just happens to be five stars. Love this podcast. They make me feel like

I'm just chatting with my girlfriends. Great information, always making me think of other things I can do to save money or being more mindful of what I'm buying. Thanks doodle and sweet doodle Gal. So glad to have you, and thank you for leaving us a review. It helps more than you realize. We also want to thank our friends who share these episodes on social media, So when you share the latest episode and tag us on Facebook

or Instagram, we add you to our monthly drawing. For every five tags and reviews we get each month, we give away a copy of the Frugal Friends workbook. Yes so keep leaving us those reviews, screenshot them and send them to Frugal Friends Podcasts at gmail dot com. And don't forget to tag us on social We do see it, even if we don't respond because we're lazy and we may not see it until several days later. I'm not

good fully on social media. But we can see it, and we appreciate it, and we like it, and thank you. See you next week. Bye. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jill. This cake has been staring at me the whole time we've been recording the cream cheese frosting. Yeah, I just want to let everybody in the air waves know I made my I made a cake from scratch with blueberries I hand picked with my own hands, because how else would you pick them except with your mouth?

But that's gross. And I made my own cream cheese frosting. And I have won the domestic Awards for I was going to say, look at how domesticated you are, but you've apparently already given for the month of May and this was just May second that I did. I'm really goodshing it. I would love to try that cake. You will, Yeah, I hope it's still good by then maybe, or I might just get in the car to you before we record the next episode. Get my hands on that cake.

Blueberries and lemons are such an amazing combination. Yeah, oh my gosh, I can't say enough good things about that combo. Kind of like us, Oh, you're the blueberry to my lemon, because we all know I'm the tart one, you're the lemon. Yeah bye,