>If you were going to buy a stock/index for a niece or nephew to hold all through childhood, what would be a good choice?

100% VT (2 letters).

>Currently do, 40% VTI, 30% VUG, 30% QQQ because they don’t obviously have to sell for an extremely long time

Value, not growth, has the better expected long term returns. As does small, not large.

The idea behind QQQ makes absolutely zero sense to me, why do you think that:

• Financials will underperform everything else?

• "Which of the US exchanges a stock trades on" is a key component of expected future outperformance?

>I’m bettering on growth and technology over there many many many years to come.

Please read these on why that night be a bad idea:

Performance chasing is a bad idea:

• https://www.vanguard.com.hk/documents/quantifying-the-impact-en.pdf (PDF)

• https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2020/12/a-short-history-of-chasing-the-best-performing-funds/

• https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-smarter-mutual-fund-investor/articles/why-chasing-stock-winners-is-a-losing-tactic-for-investors

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/ikc6n0/so_you_want_to_buy_us_large_cap_tech_growth/

Tech revolutions:

• https://www.pwlcapital.com/investing-technological-revolutions/

• https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/123

• https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/156

• https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/183

Adding "tech" to a portfolio might be a bad idea: https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/tech-allocations-in-your-investment-portfolio/

Why are you ignoring the entirety of ex-US?

$10k per year.

Edit: For electronically purchased ones. Up to an additional $5k I believe for paper ones, which must be purchased using tax refund.

They're great for credit event monitoring, but the score number provided is very limited in it's usefulness.

Credit scores aren't for you, they're for lenders. FICO and Vantage continually work to try and improve their models, as well as design ones for specific types of loans.

Credit Scores are made up of 2 (semi) independent parts:

• A reporting agency (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion)
• A scoring model (there are 2 main scoring model companies, each has many different models available)

​

When doing a credit application, lenders combine a reporting agency + model of their choice (or for mortgage purposes, they tend to have to use the combinations I linked above) then get that score to make their decision with. Because of bullet 2, you do not have a singular Equifax score or single Experian score.

TransUnion is a credit reporting agency. They provide the information that is used to fill out scoring models. So one of your many scores that uses TransUnion provided info was 811, but that is not your only TransUnion score.

​

So you have different scores for:

• TransUnion FICO 8
• TransUnion Vantage 3
• TransUnion Vantage 4
• TU FICO 9
• TU FICO BankCard 8
• TU AutoScore 8
• TU BankCard 9
• TU autoScore 9
• TU FICO 4 (this is the mortgage score).
• And More

That's all without looking at Experian or Equifax.

>Rely on the 3 (i repeat 3) credit reporting bureaus

I believe even Equifax and TransUnion push Vantage Scores for their (at least free) accounts. Experian provides FICO 8 for their free account, but even that won't be much use for determining mortgage eligibility.

Credit Karma does provide an actual TransUnion score: TransUnion Vantage 3. If you mean TransUnion FICO score, even there you don't have 1 of those, you have many.

>Should I use Credit Card for everything?

As long as there's no extra fees to do so that outweigh any rewards.

>If I pay my balance before the statement closing date to keep utilization low is their anything else that could affect my score?

Even utilization isn't anything you need to worry about: it doesn't "build" credit, it "resets" monthly. Almost all scoring models in use only care about the last reported utilization from each account. No upcoming application means no need to stress over utilization.

Credit Karma should be completely accurate for what it says it is: a Vantage score 3.

However, what it isn't is very useful: most lenders use a FICO scoring model, not Vantage. Mortgages especially basically have to use older FICO models: Mortgage scores used:

• https://www.myfico.com/credit-education/blog/credit-scores-in-mortgage-lending

• https://selling-guide.fanniemae.com/Selling-Guide/Origination-thru-Closing/Subpart-B3-Underwriting-Borrowers/Chapter-B3-5-Credit-Assessment/Section-B3-5-1-Credit-Scores/1032996841/B3-5-1-01-General-Requirements-for-Credit-Scores-08-05-2020.htm#Credit.20Score.20Versions

Edit: It sounds like in a few years FICO 10T and Vantage 4 will be used: https://www.fhfa.gov/Media/PublicAffairs/Pages/FHFA-Announces-Validation-of-FICO10T-and-Vantage-Score4-for-FNM-FRE.aspx