I am about to have my last birthday of my 7th decade. I know, a strange way to say I am turning 69. I was 33 years old with a problem. I had no idea how credit worked. I had a couple of credit cards which I usually paid on time (but not always). At 28 I had purchased my first house with owner financing. The woman I bought my first house from did not check my credit as I made a significant down payment. At 33 years old I was applying to purchase my second house and I was going to rent out my first house. We applied for a home loan from a bank, however my wife at the time had missed a payment on her credit card and I had missed a payment on my credit card. The Bank required an explanation as to why we had missed payments. I thought it was silly as neither of our missed payments were for more than $25. My income at the time was significantly more than needed to easily make the payments and other than a small loan on the first house we were debt fre...