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Actually, NOT having open credit accounts hurts your FICO score.

Posted By: tired of FICO on 2005-08-31
In Reply to: This is not true if you have multiple cards. sm - R

I closed my credit cards 10 years ago and paid them all off.  All I have left is my student loan and my mortgage, which are both paid on time every month.  You'd think that would show me as a responsible consumer because I pay cash for everything and don't live off of credit.  Instead, my FICO score stinks now because my available credit to my used credit shows as maxed out.  It's complete bunk.  People are rewarded for using credit while responsible people who pay cash are punished by this FICO system.  I have a 4% interest rate on my mortgage, but the credit union tried to milk me at 12% interest on a car loan when they advertised 5% because of my FICO score.  My only option is to open up some credit cards or something, but then that shows as excessive inquiries or too much new credit.


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Where's best place to obtain credit score?
I know I see Free Credit Report all the time on the internet, but they are not really free, right? Don't you have to sign some sort of protection coverage and pay a monthly fee? Is the best place straight through the Equifax, TransUnion and that other place? (Can't think of the name of it right now). I'm in the market for a new house and want to make sure everything is okay. Any advise?  Thanks in Advance.
Having a couple zero-balance accounts open is okay . . .
but the available credit DOES count just the same as having that same amount charged.  Lenders want to see open, good-rated accounts . . . just not so many that you have the potential for LA arge debt-to-income ratio.  Keeping 2-3 is good.  More than that isn't.  Hth. 
Well, that is incorrect information. You should leave your 0 balance accounts open sm
that shows that you are responsible and not over your head in debt. When you have a credit line of 15,000 and your balance is 0, that is a great asset. I am a mortgage loan officer myself, and the mortgage brokers want to see open accounts with 0 balances. That also helps you debt to income ratio, which in turn increases your credit score!
That was the old advice before FICO scores came out.
The new advice is to leave some of them open.  You want to show that you have credit available to you, but that it's unused.  Having just a few maxed out accounts or having no credit cards is bad now.
great website for credit and credit cards, interest rates
great website
Has anyone used a credit counseling service to consolidate credit cards?
What was your experience?  Was it worth it?  Which ones are credible?
I know it hurts, but it hurts a lot worse when you

don't have a million(s) dollar salary and you have children involved that will be emotionally damaged for life regardless.


I'm not bitter, he was abusive and I didn't like him anyway after a while. It was over 20 years ago, but my 2 kids (notice I said "my" and not "our") still have emotional issues after years of counseling.


Hey,  I learned how to make a can of "Spaghetti-O's" feed 3. And when the "father" had to start actually paying court ordered child support, he cut off ties with my kids.


Been with my second hubby for 13 years and he's a great guy. He gets the Father's Day cards.  If he cheats and I find out, he won't have a leg to stand on. Not because I'll take the chainsaw to him, but because I got wise years ago and everything is in MY NAME.


"As God is my witness, I will NEVER go hungry again!"


You can't just open the attachment. You need to save it to a file and then open SM
your wave player and load it. 
CREDIT, everyone is living on credit, and from what I see
with a rather, 'might as well, we have no future' kind of attitude.

our credit cards are maxed out, we are buying gas, food (which I swore I would never do, how stupid - all that interest for food, yuck!), paying bills, and we would not have survived without them. now they are maxed out, and we are not making one bit more than we were.

glad things must be going so well for you, but look around in your own neighborhood.

the gap is closing between rich and poor. like it is in somalia, for example.

call us doomsdayers, but I call it protecting our own interests.

why is it the only people who are supposed to care about themselves are the rich?
score
You need a copy of your report. Whatever bad stuff you can pay, pay it and get a receipt. But let a medical collection be the last priority. Do not let anyone else pull your credit report. Pay everything you have on time. Dispute things that are incorrect. Email me. This will take a while.
SCORE
Since you say you are just starting out and you are a small operation, I assume that you do not have a lot of capital to invest up front.  When I was getting started in my business I learned of a FREE service that you can consult with and get all the answers you need.  It is called SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives).  They are a volunteer organization and specialize in consulting small businesses.  Look in your local yellow pages or Google SCORE and find a local office.  Unless you have money to invest in an accountant right now, this is what I recommend.  It was the best decision I ever made.
My score was 31--
I guessed on quite a few (not the US or England, though) and even got some of the cities right.  I didn't think I'd get even half.  Cool game!
Well, I have a 99% or higher QA score.
I make between $45K and $48K doing this.

NEver been in trouble for QA. Never lost a job for QA. Have been hired for every single job I have ever applied for.

Anyone I've ever worked for has been sad to see me go. People I work for now are very happy with me. I make good money and have a good QA score.

All with no PROPER EDUCATION but just on-the-job training.

HOORAYYYYYYYY!!!!!
I love my QA score and even like my QAs
I am trying to prove a point to "I-type-fast" girl.
QA score formula
Can anyone post formula for figuring QA score.  Thanks!
CMT pass score

Can anyone tell me what is the score required to pass the CMT exam?


What was your QA score for acct?How long did
x
Monthly audits = QA score. sm
Usually companies audit your work monthly. They will pull 5 or 10 reports you have transcribed and do a random QA check on them. If you have critical errors, they will deduct whole points, noncritical errors usually a half point.

If you total QA score is below 98% three or more times in a row, some companies will do what they can to help you, put you back on QA review for a while so every report will go to QA. Other companies may just fire you or let you go.

Is this the answer your were looking for?

That's funny because after we went through CCCS our score went up significantly. nm
nm
The older the account, the higher the score . . .
so they are the ones to keep.  :)
Execuscribe On-Line Test Score
No, they didn't tell me what score was passing before I tested. They invited me to test based on my resume. I don't know about having to use a C-phone once hired but no I did not need one to test.
How is QA score measured? Is there a standard scale? sm

Is it per report?  Is by the number of characters in the report?  I am guessing that a missed comma is counted differently than a wrongly used medical term...


Thanks for any help!


Maybe your experience and a high test score - sm
is perceived as a *threat* - i.e., that they may soon need to pay you closer to what you're WORTH, in order to retain your services. Maybe some MTSOs think they can make more of a profit by hiring the less-skilled and "bringing them up to speed", so to speak, within the company while at the same time keeping their wages ridiculously low. Hmmmmm....
I believe the original poster is the one doing the scoring, and she is SHOCKED at how low the score
is for the MT, and she doesn't even know what to say to the MT under comments. I can certainly relate - lately, its abysmal in my company.  How, oh how, do these MTs get hired?  To me, that is the BIGGEST mystery. 
Expecially if you can try to impress strangers with a bogus IQ score
x
I have heard the test is a joke and you don't need a high score
basically because they're desperate and need to keep up with TAT. Now this is just what I've heard but by the looks of what is being hired, I truly believe this!
No credit card is a good credit card.
Just kidding. I'd suggest not using credit cards to pay debts. It'll only dig you in deeper. Look into a signature loan or putting a lien against a vehicle or house. Lower interest rate, pay off sooner.
How about zillions of accounts. MQ has these accounts so overloaded even the new hires dont have any
work. I would love to read some of these reports and then they expect perfect QA and no blanks. Did they lose their minds completely.
So sorry, I know how it hurts
nm
It hurts a bit - think of something else...
I have the ubiquitous shoulder tattoo (Pegasus) and I also have a custom design on the soft, inner part of my forearm. I like that one best because I can see the whole thing without getting into contortions. It has been touched up one time - the color red fades over time. Yeah, things change as you age, so what?

I got both after age 50 (over 10 years ago) and have never regretted it.
Never hurts to try!
I just got some the cover-your-whole-ear noise canceling headphones. They are Logitech and I got them at Staples for about 55.00. They are the best ones I have ever used. I got some stethoscope style ones not too long ago at Transcription Gear.com and they did not last more than a month. I did not even try to take them back though, I just hate returning things I buy on the internet.
Never hurts to ask. All they can do is say no!
nm
it hurts me too, but --sm
it would not necessarily be that way, the us vs them factor, if someone from either *side* had not criticised in the first place. It is what I call *defense mode*. what ever happened to the saying *if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?* Why can't we all just get along rather than starting a war over simple *words*? just a thought.
It never hurts to ask. nm
 
that hurts to look at
Please never clatch two numerals together like that for no other reason than it hurts the eyes.
How do I get it ST to open when escription is open?

Amen! A great IQ score is wonderful, but there are some dummies in the MT world!
x
cherrypicking hurts EVERYONE sm
you are supposed to be part of a team! Do you even know or care what that means?  As the other poster stated, SHAME ON YOU!
It never hurts to try. It's actually, I thought,
easy to learn and I really liked it. Although, bear in mind, it has a language all it's own but once you catch on, you will do fine. Give it a shot. You have other transcription experience so that would be a big plus as well.
Why Outsourcing Hurts Us

 


Interesting article!


http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050822_hegemony.htm
America's Lost Hegemony
      By Paul Craig Roberts

      The historian who chronicles America's decline will lay the blame on free market ideology.

      I say this as a believer in the market. My books and scholarly articles demonstrate the superiority of market systems over government allocative schemes. The problem arises when market economics ceases to be thoughtful and becomes ideological or a dogma.

      A good example of the latter is a recent Heritage Foundation study that argues that global outsourcing is the best way to equip the US military with the best technology at least expense. The study brushes away concerns with the erosion of the American manufacturing, science, and engineering knowledge base by asserting that such concerns imply protectionism and that protectionism means the death of innovation. ['Buy America' Provisions Don't Help Homeland Security or National Defense by Alane Kochems, June 21, 2005]

      Protectionism can be problematical for innovation, and the study is correct to point this out. Where the study fails is in ignoring that innovation does not take place in a vacuum. Innovation requires a material base and depends on a strong manufacturing, science and engineering foundation backed by R&D programs.

      In an interview with Manufacturing & Technology News (August 8), the study's project leader, Jack Spencer, sees protectionism as the only threat to American innovation, which he otherwise takes for granted:

      "Our belief is that subjected to the free market, the United States is still going to produce most things because our comparative advantages are innovation and new technology. If liberated from protectionism, we can compete and that is where we will always emerge as winners." [Heritage Foundation Says Congress, DOD Should Learn To Live With Globalization; Providing Troops With Best Equipment Usurps Making It In America by Richard McCormack]

      This belief is simply untrue. As this belief is the basis for the study, the study has done nothing but confirm a preordained belief.

      The US has no God-given comparative advantage in innovation and new technology. We were leaders in these fields, because we were leaders in manufacturing.

      We were leaders in manufacturing, because Europe and Japan destroyed themselves in wars, and the rest of the world destroyed themselves in various forms of socialism and cronyism.

      America's hegemony in manufacturing, science and engineering was the product of historical circumstances. Moreover, it occurred despite American protectionism.

      The historical circumstances have changed. The US gave away its scientific and engineering education and its agriculture. It did this partly for idealistic reasons and partly as cold war strategy.

      Once socialism collapsed in Asia, US corporations began outsourcing abroad the manufacture of products for US markets. Success with offshore manufacturing has led to offshore outsourcing of research and development and now innovation itself.

      As a recent report from the National Research Council recognizes, "product development and technical support follow manufacturing." One consequence for America is the loss of many manufacturing capabilities and "the increasing availability abroad of unique technologies not found in the United States."

      This development is taking a huge toll on America's human resources in manufacturing skills, engineering and science. The first American victims were blue collar workers. Millions of them lost their jobs and experienced sharp declines in the quality of their lives. But as research, engineering, design, and innovation followed manufacturing abroad, now it is white collar workers in information technology and university graduates in engineering and physics who are being displaced.

      American university enrollments in science and engineering are declining because there are no jobs for graduates. It is pointless to invest money, sweat and toil in an education that has no payoff. Markets do work. Markets are working to shrink the demand for, and supply of, American engineers and scientists.

      The next impact is going to be on project manager jobs, practically the sole remaining source of career related employment for many engineers and technical people. Project management jobs require people experienced with the technology of the job. The loss of technical and engineering jobs empties the pipeline of people who have the experience to assume management positions. Far from being able to innovate, the US will even lack the human resources to manage technical and scientific projects.

      Many uninformed people believe the problem is that America doesn't produce enough scientists and engineers. Manufacturing & Technology News reports that "a group of 15 US business organizations has launched a national campaign aimed at doubling within 10 years the number of bachelor's degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics."

      What is the point of this when there is a huge supply of unemployed engineers and technical people who have been displaced by offshore outsourcing and by H-1b and L-1 work visas for foreigners? I know an American software engineer in his thirties whose job was outsourced. After searching fruitlessly for a job for four years, he took a job in Thailand writing software programs for $850 per month.

      The anecdotal stories are legion. Yesterday, a friend reported to me that the service technician who repaired his garage door opener said his company was flooded with resumes from college graduates and engineers who cannot find work and are willing to take jobs installing garage doors.

      US executives, with an eye to quarterly earnings and their bonuses, continue to spend considerable resources lobbying for increases in work visas that enable them to replace their American engineers, scientists, and technical people with lower cost foreigners. These executives lie through their teeth when they assert the lack of qualified Americans for the jobs. The fact of the matter is, the executives force their American employees to train their foreign replacements and then fire their American workers.

      In a word, American capitalism is destroying itself by dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that have made large income inequalities acceptable. By rewarding themselves for destroying American jobs and manufacturing, engineering and scientific capabilities, US executives are sowing a whirlwind. American political stability will not survive the turning of an American university degree into a worthless sheet of paper. Libertarians and free market ideologues who rejoice in freedom should open their eyes to freedom's destruction.

      Dr. Roberts, [email him] a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former Contributing Editor of National Review, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration. He  is the author of The Supply-Side Revolution and, with Lawrence M. Stratton, of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow's Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

      COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
    


Tailbone hurts
Need advice, my tailbone just started hurting about 2 months ago for no reason, have a Herman Miller Aeron chair that has been the best, but now need some relief for my tailbone. My rearend does not hurt, just my tailbone. Went on line and the good doughnut pillows are tailbone pillows are very expensive, anyone have any cheap home solutions?
i know that hurts but here are a few thoughts....
put the emphasis on your own mother, show them how a mother should be honored on that day (and always) and throw a huge party for your own mother next year.  3 siblings and I did that yesterday (which was also my mom's birthday) and the fact that my two grown children came and brought me little gifts as well was just frosting on the cake, and that had not happened for many many years!  Try not to hold the hurt in and just resolve to show them you love them "just because" next time you see them!
It never hurts to include her even if she
doesn't come.  It is about not having regrets.  If you know that you always made an effort ...then in the end you will have peace about it.
Truth always hurts...
Hostility saying did not think a nurse should have some kind of background in transcribing??? That would be like my not having to have study in order to be a nurse. Stand by what I said in the first place, and you are the one talking about being "seasoned" as if 18 years made an authority. I never brought up my life, career or anything else in my post. Like I said, not anything ugly in my first post and stand behind what I said, a nurse still needs more than an RN license to transcribe. Oh, hey my husband drives an 18 wheeler. I also drive- does that mean I can drive one of those??? Double duh....
My wrist hurts sometimes....sm
And one time my elbow and all up my arm was hurting. I think I need to find some good wrist supports. I have bought 2 different pairs but I can't do the ones with the fingers on them. I need the ones that are just the wrist and no fingers.
Talk about anger...anyone who posts a high IQ score is a pathological liar.....
So, are you saying that no MTs can have high IQ scores?? Just because you don't, we all have to be pathological liars? Sorry.
I bought one of those, but it hurts my shoulder.
They're awkward to shove around and very loud.  The only reason I bought it was because my good vacuum was in the shop.  (12 year old Electrolux)  Strange how different perception can be from one person to another.  My husband keeps trying to give away my Dirt Devil, but I like it for cleaning out the cars.
really the only violation is if they hear it and use it in some way that hurts you...
people keep thinking HIPAA violation is just knowing it. It's not. It also has to be harmful to the patient in some way. Remember this whole thing started because some stu*id pharm tech came home and told her high school kid that Mr. So and So came in and got AIDS medicine, then her stu*id high school kid went to school and told other kids and that is how Mr. So and So's daughter found out her father has AIDS.
It hurts me to see this 'us VS them' mentality......sm
As far as critical thinking in nursing, it means something completely different that it does in MT.

Many of the errors that we see in reports these days are a product of VR. The push is on the MT to produce more and more reports for less and less compensation and unfortunately, some things get missed ----- and yes, they are sometimes hysterically funny. Being a former MT, I always let the person reading the report know that the account is being done by VR (which is true at the hospital where I work) and not a "for real" MT. Not one person that I have spoken to about VR had any inkling this was the case.

I worked as a trainer for a national and can tell you personally that I trained RNs who wanted to make the transition to MT. Some were excellent, some marginally OK, and some just terrible. I am sure that if the reverse were true, some MTs would make excellent nurses, some would be just marginal, and some would be just terrible.

There are different skill sets involved in these two jobs. If a patient were going bad, I wouldn't care if the nurse had good grammar and could spell, as long as she knew what to do clinically for the patient. By the same token, if an MT can produce an accurate, grammatically correct medical record (something that "verbatim" is making obsolete LOL) I wouldn't care if that MT couldn't insert a Foley catheter or start an IV.

I think it's just a case of not having a working understanding of each other's skill sets.

Just something to consider.
snow hurts my eyes

too much glare.  It blocks my rays! 


My heart hurts. I love House.
I've loved the Stacy/House story.  That episode with the kiss in the hotel room while he was on the phone? Man. Can I just say under this cloak of anonymity that I didn't fall asleep on the couch that night. Well, I guess that's beside the point.  I love that show..I love House.  Hugh Laurie is so great in that role.  I really wanted that story line to continue.  I like Sela Ward and I hope she comes back.  That forbidden romance story line is too good to let go.  I think he let her go for more than one reason.  He loves her but he is afraid.  He knows that he can't change and he knows that at some point she will need more, like he said.  He would rather let her go now, back to her husband who I think he likes.  He doesn't want to hurt the guy, even though he's in love with his wife. If he lets her go now, she gets to stay in her marriage.  He knows that if she stays with House, she will lose her marriage, and eventually things will go wrong with House, and they will both be losers in love.  Make sense?