Being denied employment because of a credit check :(

Nurses General Nursing

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Hi, I graduated last year..In order to get the job, they told me that they have to run a credit check on me..I know that I owe a lot of money to creditors but what my potential employer does not know is that I have a bank account with a lot of savings..The way I manage money is that I dont pay off my creditors all at once..I just pay off the minimum amount every month and save money..It is like paying off a home where people have savings but they just dont pay off the home all at once..My credit rating is excellent..I am at 780..I pay 6% interest on my credit cards..

My potential employer thinks I making too little to support myself so I got denied the job....And also my potential employer does not know that I am living with my mom now and she lets me live there for free..

Now, this credit checking thing to get hired,is kind of bad, if they dont have the whole picture! :(

Your financial plan is so bad, I can't even bring myself to comment!

P2

I don't think the above post is very nice or very helpful. Actually it is downright rude.

The OP stated that she chooses to carry balances on low-rate credit cards. Sounds like she has thought it through and made a decision to carry balances, although maybe different from the Suzi Orman or Clark Howard schools which advocate paying more than minimum payments.

If she pays her minimums each month, I do not understand why that would be considered "bad credit" by an employer.

I hope a potential employer doesn't balk when looking at my student loan debt. That balance is downright scary but I plan to sacrifice some fun for a few years after school to make double payments on those.

Good luck to the OP. I think you will find an employer who will not expect a new hire to be debt-free and financially independent.

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You are NOT saving money by paying the minimum each month and putting the rest into savings. The longer you go not paying off these debts the more you will be eaten alive with interest fees. Do the math and figure it out.

You need SERIOUS financial counseling.

Absolutely . .. .start out with a trip to Barnes and Noble and read the chapter in Suze Orman's Book "Women & Money" on page 88. Then buy the book.

steph

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I don't think the above post is very nice or very helpful. Actually it is downright rude.

The OP stated that she chooses to carry balances on low-rate credit cards. Sounds like she has thought it through and made a decision to carry balances, although maybe different from the Suzi Orman or Clark Howard schools which advocate paying more than minimum payments.

If she pays her minimums each month, I do not understand why that would be considered "bad credit" by an employer.

I hope a potential employer doesn't balk when looking at my student loan debt. That balance is downright scary but I plan to sacrifice some fun for a few years after school to make double payments on those.

Good luck to the OP. I think you will find an employer who will not expect a new hire to be debt-free and financially independent.

It isn't helpful to encourage or commend anyone to carry such an obviously bad financial plan either. I don't think the comment was rude, it was one of shock.

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When I was working on paying off my debt, I set aside "x" amount of money each month to go toward the cards. The cards with the lowest APR got the minimum amounts, and the card with the highest got all the rest of the "x" amount. I was never late.

Example: $1000 per month to credit cards. Cards A, B, & C had low rates and I paid them the minimums: $50, $100, & $150. The other $700 went toward Card D since it had the highest rate. When Card D got paid off, the $1000 was divided the same way among Cards A, B, & C.

MBNA evidently got tired of only getting the minimum. They jacked my rate from 2.9% to 22%. When I called, they said it was done because I wasn't "making enough progress" on my debt. Guess they weren't satisfied getting minimal interest from me. I promptly called one of my other card companies & negotiated a deal to transfer that balance. Now MBNA doesn't get any of my money!

Don't even get me started on how much I hate MBNA. They are truly evil. They did the same thing to me and when I called to try to negotiate down my interest rate (after making payments on time for two years) they refused.

That company wa very happy to offer me sky-high credit limit at 9.99%, then jacked up the rates without notice. Thank god I just paid that balance off. Lesson learned.

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It isn't helpful to encourage or commend anyone to carry such an obviously bad financial plan either. I don't think the comment was rude, it was one of shock.

I don't think we got the full story from the OP but still I think the response I quoted was really more about getting a chuckle from everyone at the OP's expense, rather than offering any good financial advice. I just have trouble with that kind of humor.

Other postings on this thread (yours included) have offered polite and thoughtful suggestions that the OP would be well-served to consider.

Just my humble opinion.

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Specializes in Peds/Neo CCT,Flight, ER, Hem/Onc.
Just to clarify: A mortgage is not tax-deductible. If only it were so! It's only the interest on the mortgage that is tax-deductible.

Sorry. That's what I meant. I had been up all night and sometimes I get a brain/hand disconnect.

Also to the person who didn't think spending 10K to save 3K was smart. As someone pointed out my house is appreciating at a rate of about 6% a year so in the end I will have paid less for something of a much higher value. And for me, single no kids, the tax write off is a tremendous help. I'm seeing virtually no return on the shorts I bought with my Visa card.

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if you go to finance a car or a house you will find that even if you pay on time a large debt would be a red flag for a lender

also, i have heard but am not sure about this, if you live with a family member other than a spouse in THEIR home that puts them is a less desirable credit level when you pt to borrow

HOWEVER that does not have anything to do with a job application

if making poor life decisions were a reason to deny employment there would be a lot of empty hospitals

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To the original poster- unless you are making more on your savings than the 6% you are paying out on your credit cards (which is very doubtful in this economy) then you are not being wise about your funds and despite you having money in the bank, it is costing you more money each month.

The best thing to do is begin by paying off the credit cards that you are paying the largest interest rate on first, then work down from there, paying off the ones with the least interest last.

Also, you may want to close or consolidate some lines of credit. When you go to buy a house, even if you are using a small portion of credit lines available to you, they will take into consideration that ALL available credit is being used. That means that say you have only a balance of 5,000 on your cards but you have cards with limits totaling $100,000 they will assume that you will use all of that at some point and that could really jam you up. This may be the reasoning behind the empolyer as well.

Some non-profit consumer credit agenices may be able to analyze your credit cards and help you come up with a plan to pay them off quicker.

Best wishes.

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To the original poster- unless you are making more on your savings than the 6% you are paying out on your credit cards (which is very doubtful in this economy) ....

Just FYI ... I do have a fixed rate of 4.8 interest on one of my credit cards ...

Obvously that deal isn't available now but, Citibank was making those offers a couple of years ago ... which is when I locked in that interest rate.

Hopefully, there's nothing in the small print that would allow them to change it (i.e. like Capital One recently jacking up the rates on their cards).

But, so far, Citibank hasn't done that yet, at least in my case.

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Specializes in Peds/Neo CCT,Flight, ER, Hem/Onc.

But, so far, Citibank hasn't done that yet, at least in my case.

Don't get comfortable on that. I recently got an offer from them that beat my current credit card hands down until I looked at the extremely, microscopically fine print on the back. It clearly stated that they could raise the interest rate at any time for any reason to whatever interest rate they wanted. So I called them to clarify. The customer service person stated that that is how all their accounts are managed. I asked her if that meant I could apply at x% interest and they could jack it to 25% the very next day just because they wanted to. She said "uh, yeah." I asked her if she thought that made this offer a great deal and she couldn't answer the question. It was kind of funny. The moral of the story is be very careful.

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Specializes in Emergency.

This sounds very bizarre to me. A credit check is going to furnish your credit score. 780 is an excellent score. So how can you have bad credit?

Also, most employers don't ask for a credit check unless you are going to have access to the companies monies or financial records. This would not apply to most RN positions. A background check yes, but not a credit check.

Finally, for all those who are making comments about the way you manage your money - you must be doing something right to have that high of a score. Keep it up!

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Don't get comfortable on that. I recently got an offer from them that beat my current credit card hands down until I looked at the extremely, microscopically fine print on the back. It clearly stated that they could raise the interest rate at any time for any reason to whatever interest rate they wanted. So I called them to clarify. The customer service person stated that that is how all their accounts are managed. I asked her if that meant I could apply at x% interest and they could jack it to 25% the very next day just because they wanted to. She said "uh, yeah." I asked her if she thought that made this offer a great deal and she couldn't answer the question. It was kind of funny. The moral of the story is be very careful.

Yeah, I called too just to make sure and they told me, at the time, that they couldn't change it but ... with today's credit scare, who knows.

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