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Do you know your credit score?

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BrutuStrength said:
If you have a difficult time creating an effective budget to pay down your debt, or feel overwhelmed by the debt, then you might want to call an organization such as Consumer Credit Counseling Services. They will help to devise payment plans with your debtors. They will require that all credit accounts be closed, and the program will have some negative impact on your credit ratings. It would be best if you could eliminate the debt on your own, but if she already has a bunch of late payments and major delinquencies on her credit report, then it might not make things any worse at all.
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excellent post! with her score she almost has to have delinquencies. it could be that she is just really really young and has more available credit than income but... if i had to guess id say there are going to be many late payments and deliquencies.

i have an average of 726 across all 3. i used to work for a credit card company as well. though i didn't actually work with any of the approval process, i was tech support. i was always told it was best to have one of the 3 major credit card types. a straight visa/mastercard, a gas card, and a store card. to keep a low balance but never completely pay it off. and any loans you take out always pay them on time and in the full about and be cautious in paying them off too early. if you do that loan may not help you very much in establishing long term credit.
 
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My wife and I are fighting with GMAC about late payments on our trucks... they posted them as being over due but there is no way they were. It dropped our credit score by a lot and caused us problems with finacing for the house we wanted to buy (which we are now not getting).

About 8 years ago we were in a pretty big debt and went through a credit counseling service and got it paid down to almost nothing. Shortly after that we had our boys and racked up quite a bit in medical bills (hell, the insurance company had to pay almost $400,00 for their stay in the NICU when they were born).

Screw GMAC!
 
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martinss01 said:
...i was always told it was best to have one of the 3 major credit card types. a straight visa/mastercard, a gas card, and a store card. to keep a low balance but never completely pay it off. and any loans you take out always pay them on time and in the full about and be cautious in paying them off too early. if you do that loan may not help you very much in establishing long term credit.
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I respectfully disagree with some of the information that you've received. Store cards and gas cards are generally worthless when it comes to establishing "real" credit. They are fine for a younger person to start a credit file, but established banks generally disregard them. They are usually dismissed by banks because they can only be used at limited locations, so they're not indicative of how a person would manage those accounts if they were regular mastercards or visas.

I'd recommend that each person get 2-3 real credit cards, and have at least 1 mastercard and 1 visa account. I also disagree with the notion of not paying off the full balance monthly. You should only keep a minimum balance if the bank charges a fee when a minimum balance is not maintained. And in that case, you should switch to a non-fee based card ASAP. You should try to pay the balance off of each account monthly, if possible. If it's not possible, then stop using any credit accounts until it is paid off. Your credit files will grow just fine. My wife and I never carried a balance on any of our cards until we moved, and charged a lot of money to pay the expenses.

My wife still works for a credit card company, so she can view our accounts at her work. The accounts show a revolving 3-6 month average of our fico scores (which are also averaged from the main credit bureaus.) Our scores are presently between 760 & 790.

On a side note, each credit bureau reporting service (experian, transunion, & equifax) typically provides better information in certain regions. As an analyst, I always favored experian and transunion. We were not allowed to use equifax for much of my 2 years as an analyst, because they had a major issue regarding accounts with corrupt/incomplete data. That was 6+ years ago, so they might be better now. I would still standby experian and transunion reports as being more accurate.
 
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When I bought my home it was brought to my attention several of my fathers (and interestingly enough one of my mom's cars) loans/lines of credit were in my name (same name, same address at the time... guess these geniuses didn't figure out the difference in the SS#... as in a totally different set of nine numbers).

We cleaned most of it up... it did take time. The credit agencies didn't get it right the first or second time (and they make it near impossible to make contact with their "customer support staff"). One of the items we gave up on and just let it sit on my report (a car loan... my folks paid it off while ago, so there shouldn't be any of their stuff on my report anymore).

I frankly have no clue what my score is... I've always had preferred rates (even while in college, I was a dependent of my parents and was legally allowed to include their income on my application for credit... nothing like a 1.4% plus prime while in college many years ago :biggrin: ), and have yet to be turned down for credit... I've closed one card in my life, the other two cards I've had for many, many years (one is for emergency purposes only)...

I did have some yahoo's from Japan steal my card number over the internet... took about six months to get those charges/interest expense removed from my account (they did immediately change the account number so the thief’s couldn't continue to rack up charges at my expense).
 
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BrutusStrength,

I'm glad you brought up the part about keeping a balance on credit cards to maintain a high rating b/c I've never understood this logic.

Why would you keep paying on something if you had the ability to pay it off?

I've never carried a balance on a credit card and payed my car off a year and a half early and have a credit rating in the mid to upper 700's so that shoots the keeping a balance theory out of the water.

I'd like to see a "rational" explanation of why I should keep a balance versus paying it off every month?
 
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I just called one of the "customer care" numbers that my credit union gave me to have the credit report fixed and it must've been Tibs' brother that answered because I couldn't understand anything the fucker was saying. I tried to get an interpreter but I guess there wasn't one available. :smash:
 
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gbearbuck said:
When I bought my home it was brought to my attention several of my fathers (and interestingly enough one of my mom's cars) loans/lines of credit were in my name (same name, same address at the time... guess these geniuses didn't figure out the difference in the SS#... as in a totally different set of nine numbers).
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gbear....there are 3 things that can cause confusion like you are describing, and you nailed 2 of them...similar name, address and birth date. If you have 2 of 3 that are similar, it can cause problems. Amazingly enough, the SS# has nothing to do with having credit, judgements, liens, etc being reported on the wrong report.
 
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Thump said:
I'd like to see a "rational" explanation of why I should keep a balance versus paying it off every month?
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As I alluded to earlier, the only rational purpose for doing so, would be that if the bank/company charges like 50 cents during months when you don't carry a balance. It might be cheaper to keep $1-2 on the balance, and pay the interest for that amount, since it would be cheaper than the 50 cent alternative.

Time and accounts in good standing are what drive credit bureau scores. Balances actually detract from ratings, since a person with existing debt makes for a worse customer than a person with no debt, all other things being equal.

For example, let's say that 2 people have identical salaries, mortgages, and car loans, same number of credit card accounts, and same amount of time on credit reports. Person #1 has $8,000 in pre-existing revolving debt and person #2 has no revolving debt. Person #2 will have a higher credit score, because he has a lower amount of debt reporting on his credit bureau, so he is considered a lower risk because he doesn't have the additional credit obligations.
 
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BrutuStrength said:
As I alluded to earlier, the only rational purpose for doing so, would be that if the bank/company charges like 50 cents during months when you don't carry a balance. It might be cheaper to keep $1-2 on the balance, and pay the interest for that amount, since it would be cheaper than the 50 cent alternative.
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What kind of stupid cards have that rule?

Anyone who actually has one of those should be shot.

I think, and this is just my best guess, that people think keeping a balance is good b/c companies will think they can make interest off of someone who doesn't pay their balance monthly.

Just a hunch but sorry to tell those people that they are dead wrong.

On the other hand though, people who don't even have a credit card and always pay cash for everything will probably have a lower score than someone with a ton of debt on a credit card only b/c they (the credit card holder) have some kind of history for the lender to go off of unlike the cash-only payer.
 
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