Big Brood

… you buy your beef in half-cow increments. (Hey, it’s cheaper that way!)

Over at The Sun’s Financial Diary, Sun has a post about the anniversary promotion from myFICO that allows you to get your FICO score at a 25% discount. Look toward the end of the post. This is a really great deal.

Also, if you’re wondering what determines your FICO score and what it is all about, I found this great guide on myFICO.

In summary:

• Credit scores are used to determine your ability to pay for your loan.
• The FICO score is based on:
  • 35% payment history
  • 10% Types of Credit in Use
  • 10% New Credit
  • 15% Length of Credit History
  • 30% Amounts Owed
• This guide gives great tips on how to keep your score in good shape such as:
  • Keep balances low on credit cards
  • Pay off debt rather than moving it around (whoops, we have done this one too often!)
  • Do rate shopping within a short period of time. This helps the FICO system to determine whether you are really shopping for rates or desperately casting about for new lines of credit.

We have not checked our FICO yet as we didn’t want to spend the money and we didn’t really think we’d be in the market for new loans. Our mortgage shopping has gone without a hitch so far so I’m not too worried (not to mention that Goosey has always been very good at paying bills on time.) However we did use a FICO estimator just to get an idea of where we stand.