n a recent column about simplifying your financial life, I recommended consolidating accounts and getting rid of ones that you don’t use, especially when they have high fees. A couple of readers wrote to me with credit score questions: “If you cancel a credit card doesn’t it affect your credit score?” wondered the first. “I […]

Mr. Urbanski has filed a complaint in the US District Court for Middle District of Florida alleging that Enhanced Recovery has called him approximately 150 times on his cellphone. If Enhanced Recovery did not have Urbanski’ s permission to call him on his cellphone or even if it did and Urbanski revoked that permission, then […]

All Mortgages Are Not Created Equal FICO credit scores range between 300 and 850. For everyone on the lower end of that spectrum, there’s still home-buying hope. According to mortgage software firm Ellie Mae, the average FICO score for approved FHA mortgage applications was 689, and much higher — at 755 — for conventional applications. Government […]

If you’ve ever tried to check your credit and come away discouraged because you didn’t have a credit report or it didn’t have enough data to generate a credit score, you might be looking for a shortcut to building credit. Becoming an authorized user on someone else’s credit card — often called piggybacking because you’re riding on the […]