Building Credit History

This post originally appeared on this blog on 8/30/2012, but it's such an important topic we felt we should revisit this one.

Even if you are not in the market to get a loan, having and building a healthy credit score in the United States can be beneficial and even fundamental for managing your bills. Your credit score is a complex algorithm designed by lending agencies to allow lenders to quickly and easily judge how likely you are to pay your bills and manage the amount of debt you request to borrow. Your credit score can earn you discounts and perks, even on basic utilities like electricity (or washer and dryer rentals!), or it could prevent you from being able to obtain loans in the future, all depending on how you spend your money over your lifetime. Though it takes years to build credit, don't feel intimidated! There are a few simple things you can keep in mind to build a good score.

Credit is based mainly on your borrowing history.

Even if you have a bank account and pay your apartment rent on time and have never had a credit card or been in debt, you may not have an established credit history. Having no credit can be just as detrimental as bad credit because lenders don't have any idea about how likely you are to pay your debts. The credit bureaus recommend that you have somewhere between 4 and 6 accounts that report to credit agencies to have a healthy score. A credit line could be a student loan, a car loan, or even as simple as a card that you buy groceries with and pay off at the end of each month.

You don't have to start off with no credit when you turn 18.

Parents can add their children's names to credit accounts when they are of age, usually around 16, to begin building credit. Your teenager does not have to use the card or even make payments, just having her name on the card will piggyback off of your credit score. However, keep in mind that if your credit is bad and you do this, your child will inherit bad credit too.

The amount of time you keep a credit line matters.

Having long-standing accounts that are paid on time for several years helps to build your credit. This is another great reason to start early when building your credit. Even if you pay off your debts, try to keep at least one card around that you have a long history with.

Keep a low balance on your cards and low overall debt.

Try to keep the amount of debt used on your credit line below 30%. A heavy determinant of your score is how much debt you have compared to how much you make each year. But just having a maxed out credit card can be damaging to your credit. Try spreading out your debt over a couple of cards and try to be as pragmatic and conservative as possible when judging how much you need to borrow. Just because you can borrow a lot doesn't mean that you should.

Hard inquiries to your credit do effect your score, but not by much.

Any time someone other than you checks your credit -- that is, any time you show interest in taking on more debt-- lenders see this as a potential risk factor in lending to you, which can potentially damage your score. However, the actual debt you have compared to your income and whether you pay your bills on time is far more weighty than an outside agency checking your credit. To limit the number of checks, check your own score regularly so that you have your rating in mind. Then whenever you are interested in dealing with a company who checks credit, be sure to ask what general score range they look for to get the best rate. This will help you judge how likely you are to be approved at the budget line you are looking for without adding unnecessary dings to your score.

Checking your credit score is free!

Though all of these factors are very important, the best way to keep on track is to check your score and your detailed report. Credit scores vary so much from person to person because everyone's financial needs are different. You can check your score as many times as you want, as well as obtain at least one annual detailed report from each of the three main credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) at no cost. Credit monitoring sites such as CreditKarma.com are a great free resource for gaining insight into your credit history. If at any time you see major changes in your score and you're unsure why, get a detailed report from each of the bureaus to make sure your affairs are in order. Big unexplained changes can point to errors in reporting or even identity theft.

Remember, knowledge is power! Keeping your credit rating in mind when you're budgeting can give you an edge in the future. Though credit scoring can seem scary and mysterious, it's just another factor in balancing your finances that you can use to your advantage. So keep an eye on it every month, just like your bills and your bank account. And until next time, keep it clean!

How to Make the Perfect Easy Cup of Coffee

There are a lot of people out there who have reported knowing how to make the perfect cup of coffee, how to perfectly brew your espresso, how to avoid the Starbucks line. In my opinion, most of these people have over-complicated the matter with machinery and manifestos. Today we'll show you how to make a perfect cup to turn your morning from all right to great. And we'll do it for cheap. No buying crazy beans, contraptions or special filters.

Pick Your Beans
Last time you went to the supermarket, I'm willing to bet there were about 50 different bags of coffee to choose from. And so many promises, too. Dark Chocolate, French Vanilla, Italian imports, a few made-up Starbucks terms. And freeze-dried instant? Put that stuff down! You're better than that. You know how coffee smells so wonderful and you think it should taste that way too, only to find it's bland and watery and bitter? Yeah we're going to banish that disappointment. With the right bean, there's no worry. Look for:

• Whole bean (not pre-ground or instant)
• Breakfast blend if you like a lighter flavor or a little extra caffeine
• Espresso or French Roast if you like stronger flavor or less caffeine
• Fair-Trade/Organic if you can afford it (Costco has a great fair trade espresso for cheap)

Get Your Gear

I'm willing to bet that someone you know has a poor, neglected coffee grinder lying around. Grab it up. If not, you can find them for about $10-$15 brand new. Same goes for a French Press, at about the same price. Lastly you will need either a kettle or a pot to boil water in. Whatever you prefer.

via coffee.gurus.net

Keep It Clean

We like to say that a lot around here, but in this context it is truly vital. That bitterness and weird oily residue you see in your office coffee cup? That's because someone's not cleaning the electric coffee pot very well. Coffee beans are oily, and in time build up gunk and burn bitterness into every pot made. Don't just rinse off your stuff or throw it in the dishwasher. Scrub it out with a sponge and rinse it with vinegar from time to time. Especially if you got your gear second-hand. Your taste buds will thank you.

Brewing Your Cup

1. Measure out enough water to fill your french press to the line plus a cup or two more, and put on the stove to boil.
2. Put in just enough whole beans into your grinder for the pot. The amount varies depending on pot size and individual taste, but start with about 1/3 cup. I do about 2 small handfuls.
3. You're looking for a "coarse" or "medium" grind for a french press. Fine grind is when the beans are the texture of soft sand, and is usually what you'll find pre-ground at the store. If you get that, you've gone too far. Medium grind looks like small gravel.
4. Put your ground beans into your press.
5. Once the water boils, take it off the heat for a few moments. Give it 10 seconds or so for the boiling to stop, then slowly pour the hot water in.
6. Let the coffee steep for 5 minutes.
7. Put the top on your french press and slowly press down on the plunger to move all the grounds to the bottom of the pot.
8. Pour and enjoy!

I like to add a tablespoon or two of heavy cream to my coffee, but you can, of course, dress it however you like.

That's it! The simple, no-frills way to brew an amazing cup of coffee. Enjoy your joe, and until next time... Keep it Clean!

Keeping Fruit Flies and Gnats out of Your Home

It's happened to all of us. You bring home a bunch of overripe bananas or overlooked a weird tomato at the grocery store and a few days later you're finding tiny flies everywhere. You may notice one flying past you as you watch an evening TV show, and then start finding them dead in your bathroom sink. Where are they even coming from?!

Unfortunately, you can't completely avoid them coming into your house altogether. But there are some surprisingly easy steps you can take to get rid of them safely and naturally, with items you probably already have in your home.

Clean Your Home
Make sure you've gotten rid of anything that could have brought the bugs in or could still be attracting them. Throw out old food, put your produce in the fridge, wipe down the counters, mop the floors. Make sure there aren't any food spills on the floor or an old piece of fruit that rolled to the back of your fridge. Take out the garbage when you're done. Any homemade food that would normally be left out (yogurt, pickles, vinegar) should be well sealed, covered or moved to the fridge.

Clean Your House Plants
Fruit flies and gnats are difficult to distinguish from each other because they're so small. Though you might have gnats on your fruit, you'll find that they prefer to nest in the soil of your houseplants. You might not even notice the bugs when you water your plants. Go up to a plant, lift the leaves and give them a shake from the bottom. If bugs come out, you know where they're living.

There are a few options for killing gnats and preventing them from living here. One issue is that you may be overwatering your plants. This is especially common in the winter months. Give the plants a week or two to dry out. Gnats like to nest in moist places. If waiting that long is too much for your breed of plant, you can try spreading a layer of sand or coffee grounds on the top layer of soil to repel the gnats.

The easiest way to get rid of gnats on plants is by getting a spray bottle with about a cup of water and adding a tablespoon of dish soap and a teaspoon of vinegar. Stir to mix, then spray the mixture on the soil of the plants. Repeat once or twice a week for a few weeks as needed. You will continue to see flies around your home for a few days while they search for a new place to nest, but when they can't find one they will eventually die off. Continue to spray your plants after the bugs are dead to make sure any leftover eggs or larvae in the plants are gone.

Make a Trap
Traps are pretty simple and easy to make. Just set out a shallow dish of beer with a teaspoon of dish soap mixed in. The smell of the alcohol will attract the flies, and the soap will make them sink to the bottom of the dish. Leave the trap in places where you commonly find the flies-- in the bathroom, by the kitchen sink, etc.

The traps also work well if you shine a light above them. The light attracts the flies when it's dark, just like moths. A desk lamp or a night light both work well. Just set one up next to the trap before you go to bed.

That's it! With a little time and persistence, your home will be a no-fly zone in no time. Until next time, keep it clean!

What would humans eat in a zoo?

Photo Credit: Humphrey King via Compfight cc

There’s been a lot of debate recently—well, in the past 50 years—about what human beings should and should not be eating. As a recent article by Dr. David Katz points out, we know what to feed animals in zoos. Why do we have such a difficult time feeding ourselves? Most advice rests on continuing to eat the food groups available to us, but just in moderation. That clearly isn’t working for a lot of us. So what’s missing?

The newest in a long line of diet guidelines is the Paleo Diet, which asks us to imagine ourselves as cavemen and eat only what a caveman would have been able to find. As far as guidelines go, that’s pretty good. It’s not far off from “If your great-grandma wouldn’t recognize it, don’t eat it.” At its most basic, it’s eating what you can find naturally. That’s pretty broad, and can be interpreted a lot of ways. And in some ways, that’s great-- it can be applied to many different ethics, cultures and value sets fairly easily. In practice, it’s usually not hard to answer whether we would have been able to eat it. Doritos? Not natural. Eggs and spinach? Easily foraged, that’s a go. Whole wheat bread? We would have had to invent agriculture for that, so also a no.

There are some inherent problems with this way of thinking. It’s broadness can lead to some huge swings in interpretation. If you want to take it beyond just a guideline, and make it something to seriously live by, i.e. an actual set of rules, it’s helpful to know what we actually would have eaten as cavemen. Anthropologically speaking, not just in the land of imagination.

Let’s start by looking at our closest living ancestors, the bonobos. They’re a ground-dwelling primate similar to chimps, but their social structures operate more like ours. They’re omnivorous, mostly eating fruit they can pick off trees and bushes, but also forage and eat leaves, and sometimes smaller animals like squirrels, rodents and bugs. What about chimpanzees? They’re a bit more aggressive as a species and have been known to hunt, so they have a more evenly omnivorous diet than bonobos, but eat roughly the same things.

Applying this behavior to humans, one can infer that the human diet would consist of foraged foods, small animals and insects. We probably ate more fruits in the summer, fattening ourselves up, and then ate calorically and nutritionally dense animals in the winter. Though it’s probably safe to say that the difference between summer and winter wasn’t jungle hot versus ice age wooly mammoth cold, so don’t go crazy. 

Depending on the region of the world your ancestors lived in, the proportions of the diet probably varied a lot. If you’re looking at a more nomadic “caveman”, it was probably a lot more meat from following the herd. If you’re looking at humans that lived in coastal or tropical areas, it was probably a lot of fish, shellfish and sweet fruits.

They probably ate slower, too. Try sitting down with a bowl of shelled walnuts and eating a handful versus cracking them open and eating them one by one. You get full after about 5 when you’re shelling them, but with them already shelled it’s easy to stick a couple handfuls in your face. Imagine finding your berries and picking them off the bush one at a time.

Seems easy enough. But there’s another logistical issue with this diet: Since the advent of agriculture, we’ve bred and chosen the fruits and vegetables we like to eat to make them the biggest and tastiest. I’m not even just referring to GMOs and factory farming. The modern yellow banana with its super sweet soft flesh is nigh unrecognizable when compared with its starchy ancestor. Even tomatoes, formerly small, lumpy, purplish bulbs, look alien versus their rotund, spherical and perfectly red modern counterparts. The guideline of “if your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, don’t eat it” probably wouldn’t realistically apply to nearly any of our produce available today. Comparing ancient bananas to current bananas is more like comparing an arctic wolf to a chihuahua. If we want to eat like cavemen did, the supermarket selection is already completely beyond the pale. So rather than just eat any fruit or vegetable we can find today, we’ll have to be more selective to balance out nutrition for breeding.

And then, of course, there’s exercise. The good news is that primates enjoy a lot of meandering with short bursts of strenuous activity, and lots of naps. So the good news is, running 3 hours a day probably isn’t ideal to mimicking how our ancestors moved. And getting tired in the afternoon? Totally normal. The problem is, even that amount of activity is more than what most people do, and lucky is the person who has the luxury of afternoon naps.

So how do we realistically apply these points to the lives we’ve manufactured for ourselves?

For starters, we need to eat a lot more plants. Unfortunately, we’ve bred most of our fruit to basically be candy, so a lot of that is out. Citrus fruits and berries are still pretty close to what they originally were, so they’re good. Super sweet fruits like bananas, mangoes, grapes…. Not so much. Still better for you than cake, but they’ll probably make you put on a bit of weight. That leaves vegetables. White potatoes are also overbred, so pick the ones that are more nutritious, like white sweet potatoes and yams. Dark green leaves are fantastic, as are squashes and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and Brussels sprouts. If you have the luxury of growing or foraging organic nettles and dandelion greens, more power to you. Radishes, celery, carrots, mushrooms, bok choy…. There’s really quite a selection to choose from. The agricultural phenomena we’ve created would, however, be out: soy, corn, grain, potatoes.

What about protein? My guess is that most of you aren’t on board with eating bugs, though I would highly recommend them. Most wild animals are pretty lean meat, with less than 10% body fat. Lean cuts of any meat will probably count, but grass fed is best as that’s the herd animal’s natural diet. The nutrition the animal eats is the nutrition you eat in turn. Fish is also a good source, as are eggs from free range chickens that are allowed to peck and forage. There’s evidence that cavemen got a lot of nutrition from organ meat, such as stomach, liver and brain. I’m going to venture that’s out of the picture for a lot of you too, but again, very nutritious if you’re a meat eater. Interestingly, as the contents of the stomachs of animals would sometimes carry fermented dairy (calves) or fermented fruit (small monkeys and rodents), yogurt, soft cheese and wine could occasionally be on the list. If you’re getting technical, of course.

Cooking? Eating raw, steaming and roasting with limited oil are ideal. Remember we didn’t have oil until the advent of agriculture, and animals were pretty lean in the body fat arena. If you need to use oil, use the ones that can withstand the heat and didn’t have to go through a lot of processing to be created. Coconut oil, butter and animal fat. Olive oil and avocado for cold dressings.

There are trimmings to the tree that we could add that are still super nutritious, and some that are superfluous but make life that much more interesting. Cocoa, coffee, spices, herbal teas, flax oil and flax seeds, powdered spirulina and wheatgrass, gelatin, are all full of antioxidants and a great way to boost the nutritional value of your food. Nutrition, unfortunately, is also lost with modern agriculture. Supplementing with some whole foods additives like those listed is sometimes necessary, but also enjoyable.

And what about sweets? We may have had occasional access to honey. Wine is not entirely unimaginable. But these are more occasional treats than regulars. For sweeteners, it’s probably best to stick to eating straight fruit, stevia or sugar alcohols that won’t spike your insulin.

And of course, exercise. You can’t really leave your desk to roll in the grass, but there are things you can do to counter sitting all day. If you have a job that requires movement and manual labor, you’re already ahead of the game. You could maybe do yoga or 20 to 30 minutes of strength training 3 to 5 times a week to feel at your best. For those of us tethered to a computer, or sitting on our couch at length at the end of the day, start incorporating long walks into your daily activity. Play outside with your kids. Go for short high-speed runs (HIIT and interval training are great primers for this). Walk or bike to work. Convert your desk to a standing desk. Go for walking meetings. Move around the office to chat with your coworkers instead of sending an email, stand to make phone calls. Just move around more in general. And the naps? If you have the luxury, take a 15 minute nap on your lunch break or in the afternoon instead of that third cup of coffee.

Vegetables and leaves, citrus fruits and berries, a few nuts and seeds, limited oil, lean meats, eggs and fish. Bugs and organs if you’re game. Possibly yogurt, cheese and wine on occasion. That’s what we’d eat in a zoo. Abundant, yet at the same time austere. No worries about calorie counting or logging long runs. All in all, as a diet it’s pretty forgiving. The amounts of protein and vegetables are probably a bit variable, but I would err on the side of far more veggies than protein. Eat slowly and mindfully. Move around more. Allow time for short siestas. And above all, keep it clean. :)