Money & Finance #59: Credit, Money Management, and Saving

What a Good Fico score looks like!

Read the article How Credit Scores Work - Ok the article says " Fair Isaac and Company, which developed the score, felt that the score would only confuse consumers since there was nothing to tell them what it meant or what lenders were looking for." I don't know who they think they are kidding I don't believe for a minute that's why credit scores used to be hidden from consumers. And even now that they are available, we must pay and it's not inexpensive. IMHO, I think they should charge the business for accessing our credit scores and if they already do then charge them more! and not charge the consumer at all (it's their information after all). Then companies might think twice about offering credit so easily and ultimatley the consumers may be in less trouble. Thankfully I have good credit not because of anything I've gone out of my way to do just used common sense and paid back what I borrowed when I said I would. However I can see where this would be helpful information to someone who didn't know about credit and how it works, got into a bit of trouble and is now trying to work their way out of the problem. I took the Credit Score Quiz and scored a 10 out of 10.

I've never made a formal spending or budget plan but I looked around at the resources listed in the blog. The one you can complete in about an hour looks pretty basic and easy. It really is wise to know how much you make, how much you spend on absolute necessities, how much you spend on things you don't really need and how much is left over and what you are doing with it. Everyone should have an education on budgeting and managing your money. If I were to make a formal spending plan I would use the Quicken software that we have and use for daily. Once in awhile my husband and I will say to each other hey where's all the money going and we'll sit down and run a few reports on Quicken and it will tell us and we'll say hey, we really need to cut back on eating out, buying gifts, boy that phone bill is out of line with all the others did we (teenagers) go over? or that water bill looks high do we have a leak? etc...

With regards to the TCDRS site I did check it out and was happy to find that even though I am part-time I may still receive retirement benefits. Now start the countdown...29 years, 9 months, and 29 days to go....