If you don't build it, they won't come!
Question: Caleb has had credit problems in the past, but has tried to clean them up. He wants to buy a house and wonders how he can improve his credit score.
Dave Ramsey's advice: Pull a copy of your credit score and make sure you have no outstanding bad debt or unpaid debt. The second thing that could cause your score to be bad is past debts that have been paid but are still on there. Remember, you don't have to have a credit score to get a house. You have to have cleaned up your bad debts, but if you find a mortgage company that does manual underwriting and can verify that you've paid your bills on time, then you qualify for a premium mortgage. You don't want to spend your life building your FICO score, because it's just an "I love debt" score.
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Regardless, if no one does manual underwriting any longer, then I just won't buy a house until I can make a 100% down payment. My FICO score is going to look like Dave's one day ... zero ... because I no longer borrow money. I most certainly won't "build my credit" because the nit wits at the average bank refuse to look at anything other than my FICO score ... morons don't deserve my business anyway.
Also, is there a way to get a free credit score? I got the free reports but they want to charge for the score.
Love the class.
Thanks