Knowledge is power. They don't teach much about money management in school. Many didn't learn much about it at home - as children grow, it seems to me wise to have them gain in-depth knowledge, incrementally, of how the family's financial system works. When I was a kid, we got a weekly allowance, that grew as we grew, and we were epected to buy our clothes for school and cover school expenses (which were smaller than currently). World War II began in 1939 when I was 10, the farmhands went off to war and what Dad and this 10 year old, plus a couple smaller, got done - got done: the rest ... didn't. We had lots of work in summer and Dad paid us for that, which helped us buy the things that we needed to return to school and there was an increase in our allowance, to compensate for the increased chores, year-round. We were encouraged to save some - I had a bank account when I was too young to see over the counter ... and we were expected to pay at Sunday School, church-based youth group, etc. from our allowance. In case of dire emergency, we could borrow against future allowance from Dad, which entailed some questions as to whether we might have foreseen the problem, and, even if not been able to have seen it coming, to cover the cost from savings, had we chosen to have some/(any?). And we learned early the discipline of getting along for a while on less after we'd borrowed, for Dad expected us to repay those loans earlier rather than later. Good training as to management of debt ... which would be helpful much later, when "credit" cards appeared on the scene: we knew that they didn't offer "free money". When we use someone else's money - usually they require some compensation (and, sometimes ... way too much: have you investigated the economics of the recently-arrived "payday loan" game?)! After one has stepped into a bear trap - it's a bit late to wish that one had chosen where to put one's feet more carefully! Looks as though Microsoft has cut some of our opportunity for learning about one portion of personal financial management a bit short, also. ole joyful P.S. When one guy, regardless of how central a position he holds in our economy, can become the richest man in the world in half of a generation ... ... do you figure that possibly sometimes people get overcompensated for some innovative discovery that they have made (usually, along with a number of others)? That just possibly our free-market-based economy could stand some tweaking? And the Bolsheviks and the Commuist systems aren't any better - look at all of the newly-minted millionaires ... nay, billionaires ... that have been appearing in Russia and China as their system matures (goes to seed?). And during their heyday, they arranged things so that not too many became part of the core system - didn't want to spread the largesse around too much - or it'd get too thin for each! o j

I totally agree about the moral component, and am very disappointed that my son is in this position. I have to tell you though that back in 2006 my son tried to deal with Discover card by offering to pay them at least the original balance of $1200, but they would not discuss anything with him until he was behind on his payments by several months. He then spent a year in school in Germany (he has been putting himself through school since he was 24 and finally graduates this year). I think that during that year they closed his account and sold their interest to the collection agency. I did raise my kids to be honest and to honor their commitments. I wouldn't even let them eat grapes in the grocery store that we hadn't paid for yet when they were young, or pay a child's ticket price at the theater after they had turned 12 (or whatever the adult age was) even when they looked younger. Unfortunately my son made a few bad decisions and the fees and penalties on this account more than doubled his original charges. I was really just curious on what would be better for his credit score, because I know that sometimes people end up being penalized when they are trying to do the right thing.

Evaf , thank you! I will check out credit karma. The only negative things on each of our credit reports are a few medical bills. Yes we do use loans ( like I said my husband likes to change cars every year... oh, and i have a new student loan, graduated nursing school last year!) And we are looking to refinance our home, so that will be a new loan. The guy at lending tree calledafter we were apapproved and said he was puzzled by the low scores, because they have people with scores of 725 or better that have don't have credit histories as good as ours. He said that they have a department that specializes in fixing credit scores, and they are going to look at ours because they shouldn't be this low. We will see if he calls back, because the last one didn't. That's why I asked the question here. Evaf, i thank you. Yours was a very helpful response. Kirkhall, I'm not sure if I'm being overly sensitive, but I did not find your response helpful at all.

What credit score do you use as a threshold for potential tenants?