the mystery of credit

I wouldn't bother with a $200 offer unless there was some other significant perk.

Two years ago opened a chase ink account, $900 for spending $3K in the first 3 months. Had an hvac to replace, so that covered it nicely. Also got 1.5% back on the purchase amount.

I don't open new accounts often, but when I do, the perk has to really be worth it.

hello

I look at it the same way, but thought, wouldn't it be nice to take 30 sec and have $200 against an unexpected car repair this week.

At work, I got an offer $500 for a 45 min recorded focus group. One, that's not allowed, two, recorded? No thanks. But I'd like $500. They used to give $100 all the time for a survey that takes 15 min, those I did.

So anyone reading this, don't bother, and don't be fooled with the words, "pre-approved."

It's pre-approved, unless you don't have debt and don't pay installments. Now, it's we don't want you lol

credit card was approved.

Who knows why.

I got a letter we cannot continue processing your application unless you call us.

They wanted:

Name
last 4 of SS
DOB
address

then to read back a number of a text to the cell on the application

then told I'm approved.

WHY?

I had perfect credit until this inquiry ruined it lol

I do feel "bad" that I would go through this to get $200. Grow up, is what I tell myself. Don't fall for this again. You're not a spring chicken anymore.

Wrap your head around this insanity;

I have a money market account at cfg bank. I push some funds in there from another bank to open a CD.

Go through the CD opening process, get to the funding part. It wants an ach/routing number. Call up support. Yes, even though the funds are coming from their bank, they still go through ACH to fund the new acct!@#!#!@#!#!@#

https://www.cfg.bank/personal-banking/personal-deposit-rates...

Last time I opened cd's here a rep moved funds form the MM to the CDs; all done in the same day.

Now, because of their insanity, I will lose 3-4 days of interest. Fortunately the amount is not huge so it's tolerable and the rate isn't terrible; 3.78% APR for 3 years. I'd be more pissed if it was a larger dollar amount where the lost interest could amount to $100+.

This is supposed to be progress. Probably the last CD I ever open with them unless they change their process next time around. Who comes up with these insane policies.

A different bank works completely opposite. As an existing customer, you go through the acct opening. At the funding stage it recognizes you are a customer with accounts so an so with such and such balances. Would you like to fund the cd from one of those accounts? Yes.. Great, how much? Done. It literally takes 5 minutes to open and complete the process.

For the retarded cfg bank, they claim their system won't allow them transfer funds from an existing account. Pushed to speak with a supervisor who gave me the same spiel.

My guess is they use a third party verification when opening accounts and the funds flow through that third party first. Not sure how much verification was done given I got everything frozen including the credit bureaus, chex, lexisnexis and innovis. I'd freeze EWS if such an option was available.

/rant off

Yeah, I had something similar happen. I think they use not just a credit score but another score (I forget what it's called) and that tells them what is the probability someone will payoff the balance in full during the grace period before any interest charges are accrued. This is a score that you will never know as they are not required to disclose or in most cases won't even admit they have other qualifying criteria. If you have good credit don't take these offers as a hard pull on your credit will lower your credit score, not a lot unless you have more hard pulls and considering you may be rejected based on the "other criteria". If you want another credit card look for offers that will not do a hard pull unless accepted.

My FICO Score 8 is 850 and others its 834. The teaser is $$ off but they're hoping you make installments and they collect interest off you. Some credit score models use 850 and some 900 and depending on what credit reporting agency your score can be different because not every creditor reports to all 3. If your score goes from 850 to 800 it really won't make any difference. Depending on the model and who's pulling it (auto loan vs a new credit card) different categories are given different weights in how they effect your score. A new card every few years isn't going to ding your score to much. Do it 3-4 times in one year and some creditors might get nervous. If I'm looking at a sizeable purchase and someone offers me $200-$400 off for opening a line of credit I'll take it.

Here's a take from CNBC website, A perfect FICO credit score is 850, but experts tell CNBC you don’t need to hit that target to qualify for the best credit cards, loans or interest rates. “If you’re at 760, or 780, you’re already getting the best you can get,” Jim Droske, president of the credit counseling company Illinois Credit Services, said. “You’re already hitting that pinnacle of what lenders care about. Anything above that is just pride.” In fact, according to the most recent survey from FICO, taken in April 2023, only about 1.7% of the scoreable U.S. population had a perfect 850."

On missed interest.....

My wife and I are a little remiss when it comes to accounts (both of us changed our cells and never notified our retirement plans which use them for 2 factor authentication--for my wife, discovered 2.5 years later when she got an abandonment letter from one of them--log in or call us to avoid).

So for whatever reason, even though I have all my accounts setup to autopay balance in full, I like to pay manually in full, ahead of time. Lately, 2 of them, I'll dime them out, BAC and CITI, double paid. This means that although I had made a full payment manually, the autopay still kicked in, paying the balance twice.

Here's the other place I am remiss. I have money earning no interest in checking. These are the 4 direct deposits from my work. To fight the lost interest (what a disaster--to go from using someone else's money, to not), I take the amount I double paid ($1400 for CITI), double that, round up, and move $3,000 into a 3.8% savings.

These are all mental gymnastics, if I were the treasurer of a co. doing the above, I'd be fired. Essentially I've moved $3k that's earning 0%, into earning 3.8%. But why is it earning 0% to begin with lol

Pretty sure that as we get older we act more and more irrationally only to satisfy our minds....

Again some of this is simply what my dad taught me. One pays their debts. He used only cash until around 1990. One thing I never learned from him is to never have anything more than liability insurance on cars. Our 2006, 2007, 2011 have full coverage. What a dope!! From age 16 to today? I've only had 1 claim for about $2800. Subtract that from all the premiums paid and that is moronic. I do feel differently about homeowners which I could have dropped, but feel I should not. But never a claim in 22 years. That's almost $20k for nothing. Now imagine those in FLA. It's not 20k, it's likely six figures.