Intuit Credit Karma
There’s a certain mystery about applying for a credit card: Is your credit score good enough for the best card and rate? Just how much credit might you get if you are approved? With a new tool from CreditKarma.com, you can use information from a long list of credit card companies to find the best card for you, and figure out the one that you’re most likely to get approved for.
Credit card companies know where you shop, how much you spend on average and your credit history. But what do you really know about them? CreditKarma.com's new Credit Card Statistics tool, which launched Wednesday, is the latest online widget to pull back the curtain on those lenders.
Identity theft is a crime that offers a big payout with little risk of being caught. Inherent with the Internet Age, identity theft can be perpetrated virtually anywhere on Earth, and those that are victimized can be living on the opposite side of the globe from the perpetrator.
A report released Wednesday by CreditKarma.com, a free credit management website, shows that credit card debt nationally fell by a whopping 18 percent from August 2010 to last month. “The relative uncertainty of the current job market has forced consumers to live within their means and focus on being financially responsible,” said Kenneth Lin, CEO of CreditKarma.com.
The average credit score nationwide is 666, according to CreditKarma.com. That's not only an ominous number, but can be a costly one. Based on CreditKarma.com's data, the trend amongst lenders shows that a 660 credit score is the threshold to be approved for a mortgage, auto loan and unsecured credit card. Digging deeper into consumers' credit health, nearly 40% of consumers have a credit score below 660.
“Your credit score would remain intact,” Ken Lin, CEO of CreditKarma.com, says, because the bad debt is attributed to the lien holder who was responsible for the delinquency whether they’re still around or not.
If your personal finance knowledge were a pie, credit scores would be one of the most difficult pieces to swallow. That three-digit number can be confusing, so gaining a good understanding of the credit basics is important. It will give you a context for your credit score, and you’ll know what you need to do to improve your credit health.
Student debt has jumped 6% over the last year as tuitions and fees rise and financial aid is harder to come by, according to data tracker Credit Karma in San Francisco. In the Los Angeles metropolitan statistical area, students who had borrowed money for their college education typically owed $31,233, compared with a national average of $29,932, Credit Karma said this week.
And, for the record, San Francisco’s Credit Karma, which reported this data, didn’t mention the apocalypse either. They probably didn’t want to spook the stock market.
The average consumer has an average of $6,355 in credit card debt, according to a CreditKarma.com report released today — 18% less than this time last year.