Getting credit the old fashioned way...

When my wife married me, I had a couple of credit cards maxed out with payments for school. Yep, I was paying minimum balance on 19% APR revolving debt, on a few thousand dollars. Terrible. She sensibly enough asked me if I were going to, you know-- FINISH my degree, and when I answered timidly in the affirmative, she had me get some school loans at cheap rates, and consolidated my debt down to a nice tiny rate, deferred until I graduated. Good stuff, and a smart move, that was.

We bought a house, with that debt sitting there.

We sold that house, and bought another one, with that debt sitting there.

Nowadays, I pay a bit every month on that debt, and it's still there. I figured that this would make my credit look kind of stale.

Apparently not. We just got locked in a nice rate for our house that we bought last year (international bank of Mother In-Law), and which we would like to pay off. The rate was astoundingly low, at 4.75% for 15 years, and I'm pretty happy about the tiny size of the payments. I asked the banker lady about our credit, and she snorted. Near perfect. She showed me the credit reports, and my jaw dropped. I'll be honest: having never really studied the whole credit thing very much, I didn't know that the numbers went that high. I was vaguely aware that over 700 was pretty good.

I'm not bragging-- all I did was marry a good wife who takes what little I bring home, and manages it effectively. She also says "No" a lot, which means that we don't have a lot of expensive white elephants that I would love to have around the house, but which would drain our finances and ruin our credit. And she can cook. And... well, there are other benefits.

Okay, maybe I'm bragging a little. I married well. But I've mentioned that, I think.