Shout out to pi-hole

Yes, or Lenny users just in general

Edit: I’m not fixing it

What’s more reliable than NPR?

To be fair, there is a considerable amount of overlap.

So yea, I hear you. I pretty much exclusively listen to NPR for news, and they are pretty balanced if not potentially a little left leaning from time to time, which I actually find refreshing.

But when a measurable percentage of the country thinks fox is fair and balanced, or that FB is a news source, the ability for our free press to safeguard democracy is severely threatened.

What good is free press when there are no longer facts and everything is opinion based?

Paraphrasing Asimov, ‘There is a cult of ignorance which operates under the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is as good as your knowledge.’

When trump took a play straight out of the dictators handbook and started shouting fake news, I began to fear that this was the beginning of the end. The real beginning however was probably a few decades back when news went from dry and factual to sensationalist infotainment.

I have always felt that freedom of press was one of the most fundamental aspects of a working democracy. Without a free press, you cannot have proper checks and balances. Unfortunately, while press is still ‘free’, actual unbiased news gets only a small fraction of the viewership. Mainstream ‘news’ is nearly completely opinion driven, and profit is the incentive rather than the dissemination of information. The free press no longer serves its necessary function, there is no accountability, and democracy is at risk.

The person made a very very very bad pun. I replied with sarcasm so obvious that it didn’t need an /s tag.

That said, I admire your desire to be helpful.

I don’t get it

Well lookie who we have here… Mr Moneybags.

Nothing wrong with having 3 cards, in fact that seems to be the sweet spot. Closing cards is never good so you don’t want to just go around willy nilly opening up cards.

You are absolutely right in that you have to use it to have a good score, but you have to use it wisely. Maintain a low balance, don’t allow cards to go dormant, keep requesting increases to available credit every 6 months so that your utilization will be minimized, and diversify your portfolio with three cards, and at least one line of credit that you never use, and a revolving account like a car or home once you are ready. Sounds like you figured out their formula, congrats on the 800+.

I was 812 until I bought a house, and that knocked me down to 760. Everything I read indicates that It will take at least 5 years of making extra payments on my house for me to get back to 800+, not that it really matters because the only reason I needed a high score in the first place was to get the house.

If your total utilization is greater than 10%, or if you have a high balance carried over multiple months, your score will decrease. It will be a few months after the balance is paid in full and you utilization is reduced to below 10% that your score will recover. Then you are stuck with that card because if you ever close it, you will take another hit.

Opening a credit account is a commitment and shouldn’t be done just to get an interest free period on an appliance. You will be hit with a hard inquiry when you open the card, and will be hit if you ever close the card. An interest free period is not really a great sign-on bonus anyway because if you take them up on that, you will see a temporary hit to your score.

If you spend thousands a year at Home Depot (like a contractor or handyman) then a Home Depot card makes sense. I spend a lot at Costco so the Costco card makes sense, also the Amazon prime card makes sense for me because I shop at Whole Foods a lot.

A credit card should be paid off in full soon after you make the purchase. Get your points / cash back / etc and never allow a balance to hit the statement. The real value of the card is in the points/cash back.

I hope this is satire… because that’s not how you are supposed to use credit cards if you want to have a good credit score.

Interest or not, you should never carry a balance on a credit card. You should also never have more than 10% utilization.

Looks like you probably did three things which hurt your score… having a new account, carrying a balance, and possibly having more than 10% utilization.

I know the whole credit score thing seems stupid, but if you know how their calculations work you can get a high score in just a few years of doing everything correctly.

I actually had a pet moose named Sarah, but have never had a pet ant named Sarah so I can’t confirm this.

Thank you, I should have just kept pushing it further and further into absurdity.

The joke is that the meme has bad grammar, deer is plural. Rather than point out the obvious, I say that ant is plural, which is funny because it is both stupid, and draws attention to the deer/s. When my comment wooshes over heads, I follow it up with an even stupider comment, thinking that nobody could possibly be stupid enough to think that there is someone out there that thinks ant is a plural american english version of the British ‘ants’… and then I am once again astonished.

Well maybe I was referring to deer, and not ants. Humor is dead.

Maybe in the original British English it’s not, but in American English, ant is plural

It’s just Ant… you don’t have to put the ‘s’, ant is already plural