Think Your Credit Score Doesn’t Matter in Retirement? Think Again.

credit score

You have battled with your credit score your whole life. You wanted a good score so that you can could get the best loans, especially for your home mortgage. Finally, you’ve reached retirement, and you have it in mind that you can rest easy. You have your mortgage, you are done taking out loans for education, so you don’t have to think about your credit score any more right? Wrong. Your credit score still maters in retirement.

You Need to Watch Your Money Carefully in Retirement

Unless you happen to retire with extreme wealth at your disposal, you need to be frugal after retirement. You need to budget. After all, you don’t have the kind of income coming in that you once did. You aren’t going to get raises and other windfalls. You have to make do with what you have.

Therefore, it’s really important that you watch your money carefully. If you have bad credit, then you put yourself at risk. What if something happens and you need to refinance your home? Or what if you need to take out an emergency loan? So many things can go awry in life. Medical expenses, natural disasters, the needs of adult children … you just might need to get credit or a loan again even after you’ve retired.

If you don’t have good credit, then you’re going to end up with a loan that has terrible terms (if you can get a loan at all). A bad credit score means you’ll have a higher interest rate, which in turns means that you’ll have higher monthly repayment bills. If you’re trying to budget in retirement then you can’t afford to waste money on those exorbitant fees. If you maintain a good credit score in retirement then you don’t have to worry about that so much.

You Probably Have More Bills in Retirement Than You Anticipated

People like to paint a rosy picture of retirement. You’ve worked hard your entire life, so now you can rest. You can take the money that you set aside and enjoy your sunset years. However, this financially lovely picture simply isn’t the reality for many Americans reaching retirement age today.

Baby boomers who have retired or about to retire have much higher bills than they might have expected. In fact, many still owe on their homes, either due to an original mortgage or to refinancing over the years. Additionally, older people increasingly have high levels of credit card debt to their names. Some people even still have student loan debt when they retire!

If you have these types of outstanding debt, then you really need to make sure that you have a good credit score in retirement. You should work to improve the score as much as possible. You can do that through debt repayment, increased credit lines, disputing incorrect credit report information, etc. Once you have boosted your score as much as possible, you can then use that good credit score to get a great rate on a consolidation loan. This will allow you to repay that debt as quickly as possible so that it doesn’t hang over you throughout your entire retirement.

Plus more and more Americans retire but then start a post-retirement business of their own. If you’d like to start a new business, then you might need a business loan. If you have a good credit score in retirement, it’ll be significantly easier to get that loan.

So, yes, your credit score matters in retirement.

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