I ran a couple of interesting credit reports yesterday--
The first was for a doctor (cosigner) with 14 of his 28 accounts "Closed at Consumer's Request" All he had owing is his RE loan and a tiny (under 4K) revolving balance.
I was very curious to see if all those closed accounts (closed over a 12 year span) would impact the score. Apparently not.
He has a very high (over 760) FICO.
So, as speculated here, even closed positive accounts must still factor into age/etc.
The 2nd was a college student with 1 Chase account -- authorized user on his parents' going back to 1986. His FICO was 772 !
My biggest credit score curiosity is going to be how the discounting of authorized user accounts since so many of my applicants have them.During the last 4 or 5 years since the last big FICO revamp I've had no trouble finding college students with 700+ FICOs, but I'm expecting that number to drop unless FICO adjusts (i.e. continues the trend of giving more points for thinner records)
Just noticed the following interesting snippet on my BofA Visa Signature card: Type: Flex Spending
My Freedom Visa Signature reports as revolving. Does anyone else have rather uncommon account types on their reports? What is the actual impact of this on your score? (trying to weed out speculation)
My wife and I just both checked our credit scores, hers was 780 and mine was 750. She is a year older then me and we both make our payments ontime every month. Her credit history shows she had credit since 81 (the year she was born) because when she was 16 she was added as an AU of her moms account which was opened in 81. I only have credit histor since 2000.
I believe the reason her credit history is higher is because she was an AU, but I wanted to verify with you guys.
So when we have a child and they turn 16 and we add them as an AU do they get the credit history from our credit card all the way back to when we opened it?
Rtrain82 said: So when we have a child and they turn 16 and we add them as an AU do they get the credit history from our credit card all the way back to when we opened it?
Thanks
Nope. Because within a few months the bureaus will no longer use AU cards in their score calculations. The piggybackers have ruined it for those who wish to give their kids or spouse the extra credit boost.
SoBeyondTheNorm said: Rtrain82 said: So when we have a child and they turn 16 and we add them as an AU do they get the credit history from our credit card all the way back to when we opened it?
Thanks
Nope. Because within a few months the bureaus will no longer use AU in their score calculations. The piggybackers have ruined it for those who wish to give their kids or spouse the extra credit boost.
Yes, assuming the AU aspect is giving her "extra points". AU accounts will no longer impact a credit score within the next month or so when the changes take effect.
utilization is a big part of your FICO score. pay down your debt and wait for all your new cards to age. that's pretty much all you can do.
oh, and next time, don't do any A.O.Rs ("mini" or otherwise) with 60% total utilization.
on myFICO, they had a tool estimating the score after you pay off all your debt. It only shows going up to around 637. Are any of these even a little accurate? getting up 200 points sounds like a long time project.
This is a great thread with lots of useful info in. I would appreciate some advice on my current situation:
I moved to the USA 12 months ago. 10 months ago I successfully applied for an unsecured CC from my local bank (limit originally $500 - increased to $750 a few months ago). 6 months ago I applied for and was approved for another unsecured CC with my credit union (limit $1500). In an attempt to diversify my credit lines I took out a loan from the credit union recently which I am due to pay back over 8 months (this is secured by my savings in the credit union - if I had read this thread sooner I probably would not have taken this loan out). I have kept utilization low (less than 15% of limit) and always pay on time.
Today I started a free trial with transunion and their FAKO score for me is 711. I learned when I saw my report that my electricity company is also reporting on me. My aim is to be in a position to take out a mortgage within the next 12 months. Should I be seeking other lines of credit in my current position and trying to increase the limits on my cards, or am I better served just accumulating history for the next year and making no new applications? If I should be applying for other types of credit what kind of cards/lines would it be realistic for me to apply for?
Thanks again for all the useful tips in this thread.
SamuearlJackson said: My aim is to be in a position to take out a mortgage within the next 12 months. Should I be seeking other lines of credit in my current position and trying to increase the limits on my cards, or am I better served just accumulating history for the next year and making no new applications?This question is largely off topic, and for that reason I won't give a detailed answer or address follow-ups on your question in this thread.
Here's a short answer. While your miliage may vary, I do think based on your mortgage goal, I would pay off the new (secured) loan ASAP, make sure that the new credit cards keep a flawless history, and not apply for anything else until you get the mortgage.
Once that's done, it wouldn't be a bad idea to selectively apply for a couple of new products (and perhaps increase the limits on your current lines).
Thanks for the advice and apologies if I went a little off topic - I didn't think my question was worthy of a new thread and this one seemed to be the most applicable (as I am interested in getting & keeping a high credit score ASAP from having no US credit history 12 months ago - this I think is a reasonable FWF topic of interest to members who have not had the opportunity to build a history).
I'm particularly interested in the advice relating to how to deal with the secured by savings loan now that I have it - paying it off immediately is no problem for me.
As a general point, I found it rather difficult to find sound advice regarding how to go about building a credit history most effectively when I arrived here (I could have used this thread a while ago...). Even a basic timeline of a reasonable strategy is tricky to find.
Eg: i) After getting a SSN try to establish an unsecured credit line ASAP. If your employer has a relationship with a credit union/bank this may be easy to do. If not, you may have to take out a secured line of credit (secured by savings loan or secured credit card). With the secured line, after ~X months of responsible usage (low utilization (<Y% of limit) if a CC and always paid on time) you should be ready to get an unsecured line established. ii) After ~Z months of responsible use of your 1st unsecured line, apply for another unsecured line of credit (what would be a reasonable range of cards to apply for here?). iii) After another XX months of perfect payment history your credit scores should now be in the range YYY-ZZZ. You should now be in a position to apply for a mortgage/car loan/higher limit CC etc.....
Perhaps everyone's individual cases are too different to generalize a good strategy, but I really have no idea what the sweet spot is for the number of lines to have open in order to build history in the most effective way, and what the best times to apply for these are if my goal is to get and keep a high credit score ASAP starting from scratch.
I obtained my free Equifax report through ScoreWatch last month and saw some errors in 3 of my closed accounts. One was an installment account opened on 98/4 that has long been paid off. The other 2 were store credit cards with open date 98/4 and 2000/5 respectively. One has 11k credit limit and the other $500. They were closed due to inactivity. I called Equifax and told them that the status of these 3 were incorrect because they either showed up as "account too new to rate" (?) or "closed by creditor" (should be closed by myself). I received a letter from them 2 weeks later saying these accounts were deleted instead.
Today I checked my credit score again and noticed that my score has dropped 24 points. Nothing has changed in my report except these 3 deletions.
My question is should I dispute again? Since closed accounts will drop out eventually, should I bother opening another investigation case?
Are you a citizen or permanent resident? Many issuers may frown if you are in the US on a non-immigrant visa, like a student visa.
You won't find a general timeline for your situation - you may have success getting credit cards from major banks now, or you may prefer to wait. You've already have some credit history - I'd give it more than 6 (or 12) months before applying. Getting department store cards may help as well, even if you don't purchase much there.
Unless you need the loan, you should probably pay it off. If it is reporting on your CR, then closing it will leave it on there for 7 years. You did pull your CR from say annualcreditreport.com?
SamuearlJackson said: Thanks for the advice and apologies if I went a little off topic - I didn't think my question was worthy of a new thread and this one seemed to be the most applicable (as I am interested in getting & keeping a high credit score ASAP from having no US credit history 12 months ago - this I think is a reasonable FWF topic of interest to members who have not had the opportunity to build a history).
I'm particularly interested in the advice relating to how to deal with the secured by savings loan now that I have it - paying it off immediately is no problem for me.
As a general point, I found it rather difficult to find sound advice regarding how to go about building a credit history most effectively when I arrived here (I could have used this thread a while ago...). Even a basic timeline of a reasonable strategy is tricky to find.
Eg: i) After getting a SSN try to establish an unsecured credit line ASAP. If your employer has a relationship with a credit union/bank this may be easy to do. If not, you may have to take out a secured line of credit (secured by savings loan or secured credit card). With the secured line, after ~X months of responsible usage (low utilization (<Y% of limit) if a CC and always paid on time) you should be ready to get an unsecured line established. ii) After ~Z months of responsible use of your 1st unsecured line, apply for another unsecured line of credit (what would be a reasonable range of cards to apply for here?). iii) After another XX months of perfect payment history your credit scores should now be in the range YYY-ZZZ. You should now be in a position to apply for a mortgage/car loan/higher limit CC etc.....
Perhaps everyone's individual cases are too different to generalize a good strategy, but I really have no idea what the sweet spot is for the number of lines to have open in order to build history in the most effective way, and what the best times to apply for these are if my goal is to get and keep a high credit score ASAP starting from scratch.
Economist said: Are you a citizen or permanent resident? Many issuers may frown if you are in the US on a non-immigrant visa, like a student visa.
You won't find a general timeline for your situation - you may have success getting credit cards from major banks now, or you may prefer to wait. You've already have some credit history - I'd give it more than 6 (or 12) months before applying. Getting department store cards may help as well, even if you don't purchase much there.
Unless you need the loan, you should probably pay it off. If it is reporting on your CR, then closing it will leave it on there for 7 years. You did pull your CR from say annualcreditreport.com?
I'm on a H1-B visa which is non-immigrant (and tied to my employment), but I'll be submitting a green card application within the next year.
I've pulled a credit report both through annualcreditreport.com and through a free trial with TransUnion (which also gave me the FAKO score). I talked to a mortgage broker a while ago and he said that getting approved for a mortgage on my visa is not a problem (I know other people who have done this also).
I've read in some places that you need to have had the line of credit for 6 months before it shows up on your credit report - is this a financial myth? If not then I should be able to pay off the loan without it showing up on the CR. Otherwise I guess I am stuck with it on there unless the credit union does not report it (for whatever reason).
Hey. I think i've read everything in here. I just wanted to be sure cause it wasn't explicitly said. I was wondering if I only paid the minimum balance on one of my credit cards for the next 6 months, my credit score won't go down?
The credit limit on the 0% APR for 6 months credit card is 15K, and I only plan on using less than half of that. Also, I have 4 other credit cards with about 35K credit limit, and am using only approximately 1K of that a month. I only have credit cards and credit lines for overdraft protection
DrkApathy44 said: Hey. I think i've read everything in here. I just wanted to be sure cause it wasn't explicitly said. I was wondering if I only paid the minimum balance on one of my credit cards for the next 6 months, my credit score won't go down?
Reducing your utilization (by doing min. payments, more than min. payments, CLI) can only help your credit scores.
DrkApathy44 said: so if i don't pay the full amount, it won't hurt my credit score? The fact that you do not pay your balance in full will not lower you credit score, IF you paid at least the minimum payment and did so within the grace period (otherwise you may start looking at late/insufficient payment reported to CRA, which will hurt your score). You really need to read this thread from the beginning (or go somewhere else, but there's hardly a better place than FWF with all of its collective wisdom ) to familiarize yourself with what affects one's credit score and how.
Quick question: when I go to check my Credit Report at AnnualCreditReport I get an error message because I'm outside of the US for a few months. Any way around this? Or do I just have to go with another company/site
See if you can sign up for www.privacymatters123.com services, and see the thread about how to get that for a year for $30.
DMDiller said: Quick question: when I go to check my Credit Report at AnnualCreditReport I get an error message because I'm outside of the US for a few months. Any way around this? Or do I just have to go with another company/site
DMDiller said: Quick question: when I go to check my Credit Report at AnnualCreditReport I get an error message because I'm outside of the US for a few months. Any way around this? Or do I just have to go with another company/site
I got around this by using a proxy in the US. I can't get into details, but you can find the info on the web. Basically you need to find a proxy in the US (look here: http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html - updated daily) and enter the info in your browser settings.
This will make it 'appear' that you are in the US.
Spent the last few hours on the phone (and online, to some extent) with all 3 bureaus (TU, EX, EQ) trying to correct some mistakes on my reports mainly dealing with typos and incorrect personal info such as spelling of name, street addresses, incorrect DOB (one had me being 6 years older!) etc.. None of them are related to credit info (no negative or derog. in my reports in the first place to dispute).
- EX had like 12 permutations of my name. Some of the entries had my last name and first name reversed, some even had the word "NULL" added to my name, etc. For example, let's say your first name is Robert-Smith and your last name is Johnson. You don't have a middle name or initial. EX had listed variations such as Johnson-Smith Robert, RobertNULL Johnson, Robert Johnson, RS Johnson, Johnson-Smith Robert, etc. They also somehow had my sister's SSN# and one of her credit cards (BOA; account closed in good standing years ago) mixed in my report. I wonder what this will do with my FICO and FAKO score now that they removed her SSN and that one particular account off my report? I guess I'll have to pull a new FAKO and FICO once it's been updated to see what impact if any.
- EQ listed part of a street address (e.g. 123 Main Street) as a past employer. Wonder how that came about?
- All the CS agents at the 3 bureaus were pleasant and friendly to deal with and even had a sense of humor.
By the way, EQ (in particular) requires you to fax (or mail) them copies of both your driver's license and social security card just to correct typos of your name on their system. TU just required your driver's license.
Here are the FAX #s for EQ and TU for those who may benefit from it:
Wow, EXP is fast! Received an email from auto.notification@experian.com @ 8:00p EST notifying me that the investigation is completed and that my report is available for viewing online for the next 4 days. Looks like they corrected the issues that I had mentioned about earlier.
Sorry if this has been already discussed, as I have not read the entire thread.
In addition to credit utilization, some issuers (e.g. Juniper/Barclays) pay attention to your debt-to-stated income ratio. This is not a FICO score factor, since CRAs know nothing about your income, but it is often the factor that triggers adverse action, such as auto-closing all your accounts with the lender, credit line decrease or financial review.
So, remember to use household income whenever possible and be optimistic projecting it, as long as you can back it up, and keep utilization below 40% of stated income (this is Barclays' benchmark). Keeping utilization below 10% of your available credit will not impress them if it exceeds 40% of stated income.
My credit score is 721. I am 26 years old. All of my accounts are in good standing, I just have alot of student loan debt from the US govt (I am a medical student). I have a problem: I have been an authorized user on my father's CC for 12+years. I don't use it anymore, but since it lengthens my credit history, I thought it would be good to remain an AU. However, my family has been in a financial crisis of late, and on one of their cards, they have a $24K credit limit, with $18K charged to it. My father pays off the minimum amount every month, so it's not dinged for late payments... but the credit-to-debt ratio has definitely been affected.
Do you suggest I take myself off of this card as an AU given the financial probs? OR keep myself on there because I have been an AU for so long (i.e. long credit history). I don't really know what move to take.
Authorized user status needs to be monitored carefully. My experience has been that when one's taken off AU status, they tend to retain the balances and history that existed at the time they were removed...until they fall off one's report, that is. Sometimes this happens, sometimes not.
It's impossible to even guess whether the loss of this old but highly utilized line would be a net plus for you without knowing much more about your current credit profile. But if you suspect it's hurting, you might remove yourself as AU, then dispute the tradeline with the bureaus to get it taken off your reports more quickly. You can always add yourself again later if it appears it didn't help you.
Authorized user status needs to be monitored carefully. My experience has been that when one's taken off AU status, they tend to retain the balances and history that existed at the time they were removed...until they fall off one's report, that is. Sometimes this happens, sometimes not.
A simple dispute of the tradeline as 'not mine' after being removed as AU will get the tradeline deleted. I've done it at least a dozen times per CRA.
Also, I wasn't 100% clear if the accounts with balances are the same account on which starrynite123 is an authorized user. starrynite123 only the account with your name on it will affect your score if so.
I am trying to improve my credit which got messed up in 2000-2001. Also my medical bills (154$) got to collection in 2004. My score is around 659. I got an pre-approved offer from Bank Atlantic. I applied for that card and got rejected stating "High Utilization of Credit". I have one credit card with 1500 limit and the way i use that card is, i use the card and pay it off in 3 days. I dont wait for the billing cycle. So to me during one billing cyle i might have used more than 1000$ if you add small transations. But i had never used 1000$ all at once. I am really struggling on how to improve my credit score. I am paying all my balance in full and trying to pay on time but still my credit is getting affected by the way i use. Any suggestion would be a great help.
AJTR, first read the original post carefully, and think through how the various elements apply to your specific situation.
After absorbing that, figure out when your "statement close" date on your current card is. 9 chances out of 10, the balance on your account as of that date dictates what the balance reported to the CRAs will be. You want that balance to be quite low...ideally below 10% of the line limit ($150 in this case).
Also be sure to get your reports, for free at annualcreditreport.com , and check to make sure what negatives, or "derogatories", or reporting. At that point you can visit creditnet or creditboards to learn more about how to get those removed. Those measures, taken together, should be a good start.
WSM, we aren't disagreeing. Disputing works the vast majority of the time (though I have seen lines resurface again).
I read something recently (which I have not completely verified) that is interesting IF it is correct.
We all know how important ratios are in maintaining high credit scores and for years I have lived by the "under 50%" mantra. But a reason code on TU suggested that I keep balances below 35% and I decided to try it. When I paid my balances down per the suggestion, my TU Score (which had always been the lowest of my 3) shot up in 1 month from the 750s to the 780s. (My true EQ FICO went up too-- I only know my silly Ex Fako scores)
I did further research and read somewhere that xxx number of points are deducted for balances above 90%, xx for balances above 70%, x for balances above 50% but that xx points are actually ADDED for balances below 35%.
(Those numbers are approximations, bc nobody knows the exact ones)
Again-- When we're talking about credit scores, there is very little verifiable information, but if true, this could be a valuable tip for people striving to boost their scores for a specific purpose like a new loan or mortgage.
I have a feeling that high scores are going to be even more important in this credit environment.
I wish I had saved the reference where it said that points are added (I just did a google search and I can't find it) However I did find the TU language.
I just did a quick search and here is the 35% message for revolving accounts (I received it on my installment balances)
TransUnion: Having credit available to you is a sign that you are able to manage your finances responsibly. Lenders like to see that consumers have a large amount of credit available to them,but not so much that they could spend more than they could afford to pay back. If you currently have multiple accounts open with high balances, try reducing your balances below 35 percent of your limits to improve your score.
I have done various utilization experiments with the TC / PM123 FAKOS, and found that gradually paying down a large balance from 89% account utilitzation in increments down to 69%, then to 49%, then to 29%, then to 0% caused "across the board" (IE: all three burau's FAKOs) score increases except for the 29% -> 0% paydown, which only received a response from TU FAKO (EX and EQ made no change.)
Other peculiarities of the TC TU FAKO: 1. It is the only score which responds at all (and it happens to be substantial response, IE: 10 point increase) to reducing utilization of accounts with small overall portfolio limit & balance. (So it weighs quite heavily the individual account utilization, perhaps even as far as to completely ignore overall portfolio utilization.) Whereas EX and EQ FAKOs care relatively much less about individual account utilization.
2. (reported by snyder81) It penalizes an account having high reported "High Balance", for example if "High Balance" > "Credit Limit". Very odd indeed.
I made notes of my experiements, which I can post up later, if anyone wants to see.
DaveHanson said: Please do, that's very on topic, as is your post. Below are some of my notes on various "tests" of the TC/PM123 FAKOs. The updates are listed in reverse chronological order.
Also, you may want to review my post here regarding my analysis of "bumpage" and how account inquiries impact the TC/PM123 FAKOs.
My ruminations in this post are regarding TC/PM123 FAKO behavior relating to "High Balance" (originally reported to us by Synder81.)
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