That is why I said HELP to determine.  Can you explain "balance thresholds" and "total amount owed thresholds"? These changes represent a fairly small amount of total revolving debt. The first two changes, which represent the first 6 accounts on that list only represented total balance on my report going from $134k to $128k. The next two groups of changes represent triple the dollar changes and have already been paid.  ... View more

#3 & #5 dropped to zero. Gained 3 points to 723 (EX FICO 9).   #8 should drop from 83% to 44% and #9 should drop from 66% to 45% on same day next week. Followed by #10 from 41% to 39% and #11 from 85% to 61%.  If these noticeably help the score with #7 only changing from 98% to 97%, that should help to determine the importance of each utilization or the highest utilization.   ... View more

Well, it appears dropping those first two Utilizations below 50% might have been worth something. They both reported the new balances this morning to EX and my EX FICO 8 score went up 1 point to 720. The only other thing that reported was #4 also reported $0 again but it has been $0 for a year. They also did a CLD from $5001 to $2501 due to lack of use. Not going to Home Depot during the pandemic, sorry.  So, #3 and #5 close today, so perhaps they will update together tomorrow, which should show me what happens when the number of accounts with zero balance goes from 1 to 3. ... View more

Definitely been at 760-770 FICO 8 with more than 50% utilization before but I also had 3-4 more accounts and 3-4 more with zero balance. Several accounts closed with stores that went out of business like The Great Indoors, etc. I hope it moves a bit as that one 98% util card is 5.24% interest and more than a third of the total balance of all accounts. The last account will probably report zero in a month or two. ... View more

So here will be the first changes for a test. The first column is the Current Utilization on today's report and the second is the New Utilization after closing for the month. The total Utilization is the last line. The first five lines are CC that close today or tomorrow so should all affect reports on Monday-Tuesday by EX and a few days later by the others. The sizth line is a zero interest CC that closes 18th so will drop from 90% to 89% so may show if there is some change at 89% individual utilization. The next group all report 5-8 days after that so I might see that one by itself. ... View more

Thanks so much for the help. If these are as fixed at those amounts, it sure is an improvment over where we were 7-8 years ago. I'm going to drop one from 49.6% to 48% and see what happens. Another one closes a few days later and it will drop from 72% to 48%. A few days later on will drop from 12% to 0. I'll post the score changes. I'm at 719 EX FICO8 with $134k CC debt against $202k limit so it will take a couple others later in the month to drop me below 49% total utilization. All negatives are Utilization and too many accounts with balances.  ... View more

Typically about 750 or so. Oldest report that I've saved in the same EQ FICO 04 shows 734 but that has a 69 month old 30-day late thanks to the ex-wife. Should have been old enough at that point to have little effect but still think it had SOME. Also has 2 new accounts in past year and a $25K intallment loan. EX FICO 04 at same time was 758 and TU FICO 98 was 755.   Current EQ FICO is 756 but that is FICO 8 model now. It has $76K revolving and 41% Utilization. No new accounts, not even an inquiry. Still showing reason for hurting the score as #1 Utilization, #2 Amount. There is no #3 but that could be the new model.   I've learned that any one big negative takes you down a path in the algorithm that gives you a maximum score possible. You need to remove the big negatives or you are stuck. You don't get far until the listed reasons affecting your score become minor issues. Now if we can just figure out what is major and what is minor......          ... View more

When I had to make some huge charges to finish off a divorce in 2010, my Revolving Credit peaked at $138K, which was around 55% Util. A few creditors then lowered my limits so even when I had the amount down to $110K a few months later, my utilization actually climbed to 65%.   My EQ FICO dropped to 696 but shortly settled back to 701 and sat there for a loooong time.   AMOUNT owed never reported as reason #1 for items hurting score.   "You've made heavy use of your available revolving credit" AKA Utilization was always #1 or #2.   "You have too many credit cards carrying balances" AKA Number of accounts with balances was the other reason that stayed at #1 or #2.   Getting the amount down to $72K didn't move the score from 701. Getting the number of accounts with balances down from 11 to 10 didn't move it either. Getting the number of accounts with balances down to 9 moved it to 704.   I took advantage of another 0% balance transfer, which pushed the number of accounts with balances to 10. It took getting the amount down to $65 and the Util down to 40% to get to 708.     ... View more

I'm sorry this is happening but I would guess it is going to get worse before it gets better. You are likely to keep getting hit with the "next" problem.   The Family Law procedures vary so much from state to state that only an attorney in your state has a hope of giving you advice that will be helpful. Even they won't have much in the way of absolute answers.   I can't imagine that a joint CC is anything other than joint responsibility even if you had not signed the application. It was done so long before Date of Separation that it is unlikely to be determined to be anything other than joint. You could not justify spending $10,000 in legal fees trying to argue about a $7,500 debt anyway. A bigger problem is that the laws of your state may say that the creditor is able to go after either of you for the entire debt. If he doesn't pay, you will get to pay all of it and then try to go after him. That is certainly a very common scenario but it will be determined by the laws in your state and how each person manipulates the system. So far, he is WAY ahead of you in manipulating the system. Give that some thought and plan accordingly.   Another big thing to think about is that the norm is for ALL settlements before trial are only for the purposes of settlement and he can, and likely will, decide that any agreements made during settlement are void at trial. If you start paying half of this debt, don't think that gets you out of paying his debt too.   What about the shortfall on the house? Check on the laws in your state regarding that debt because it could be the big one. If it goes to forclosure and your state allows the mortgage holder to come after the borrowers, that could be ugly.   Sorry to scare you but the bottom line is that you can't commit to much without the help of an attorney.   Another thought: Is he a SELF EMPLOYED accountant? If so, forcing him to go through the forensic accounting to determine cash flow and business value can be very good leverage. Too bad accounting firms are one of the least expensive businesses to value.   Include ALL items he moved out of the house to the property itemization. Just because it is missing from the house does not mean it is not marital property. If he wants to claim it as his separate property, make him prove it. Start getting copies of all the CC records that have your name on it. Any property bought with those cards is stll marital property unless he can prove it is not. Did he get a cash advance on that CC? If so, assume he used that to pay a car payment on his car he is claiming as his separate property. There will be an expensive forensic accounting procedure that will need to be done to determine separate/joint value. HE will need to pay for that.     ... View more

@rlx01 wrote: If you already have an AMEX then the denial is a SP. Your chances are probably good. They base it off your personal CR anyway. Plus the biz cards have no consumer protection, so they want you to sign up for those. :) I'd be all over 100K MR though. :) Almost certainly NOT true. I have two Amex cards, one for 34 years and they do soft pull on those. I recieved both Gold 50k and Platinum 100k offers. Gold fees looked much better and it was a hard pull. ... View more

My Spark was opened at $20k, where it remains. I would think if CapOne offered higher limits, I would qualify as I generally charge $6-8k per month and PIF on the due date. That means my balance just before payment date would be $14-16k.   It stinks because it reports to personal credit. Rewards are reasonable and due date is 4 days before cycle date.   I have recently added Amex Business, which does not report to personal credit but must be paid in full every month. The due date is 11 days before cycle date. Rewards are better but there will be a $175 yearly fee after first year. There was no yearly fee first year and $300 rewards after spending $5k in first three months so I'm still well ahead for first 3-4 years. ... View more

Glad to hear it worked out. I understood from your posts that you hadn't even brought him to court yet and he was not cooperative at all. Asset/debt division, spousal support, and child support take a long time when either spouse is not cooperative or reasonable. If you both agree, then the court is thrilled to be done with you. If you have a Judgement of Dissolution, you can proceed as a single person.   I hope you didn't agree to too much and it all works out. After things settle down, you can still pursue child support as that can never be finalized in a divorce in CA. ... View more

It is great that you are working on cleaning up your credit and working on your divorce but a reality check is in order. The sad truth is that you will not be buying a house for quite some time for a variety of reasons. That should not prevent you from working on your credit but you may want to look at the big picture and change your plan accordingly.   First, you will not get a home loan IN CALIFORNIA without your husbands permission and without him qualifying on the loan. Even if you BOTH have the required credit score for you to buy a house in your name, they will still require a notarized letter from him giving you permission to buy a house.This is part of the problem with a divorce in a community property state.   Second, most lenders will have issues with one person buying a house after filing for divorce but you can work around that with strong credit. The easiest way is with a co-borrower that has strong credit like someone from your family. Even so, trying to buy a house during this period will put you in a poor position while you negotiate the terms of your divorce. Even if you successfully manage to jump through all the hoops, you would probably be foolish to try. He could simply fail to pay his attorney and that attorney could force you to sell YOUR house so that he could get paid. Putting someone else on the house and loan would help to make that difficult but if there are no other community assets to sell, that attorney can still force the sale of that house. Even if he wasn't successful, you legal costs to prevent it could be staggering.   This is a complete minefield of disasters waiting to happen that you can't imagine. I strongly suggest you not make any major changes in your life without consulting a lawyer. It only works out well when BOTH parties are responsible. If you are responsible and he is not, you may get to pay for him.     ... View more

You are making an incorrect conclusion. They DID NOT go to the acr website.   What would make you come to that conclusion? How can the other people responding think that?   They pulled reports through their system, which show as inquiries through each of the CRAs that were used. If they only pulled a report that used EQ data, then it shows an inq on EQ. If they pulled a report that used TU data, then it shows as an inq on TU. If you have inquiries on both, they pulled reports from both.   JM-AM, Take another look at the post. You know better than this.......         ... View more

@Simpleton wrote: I'm looking for my real fico score and I had assumed that what I see is what my lenders see. I can safely assume though that my score is between 708 and 765. I thought there was a place I could get my actual number. Im not trying to start trouble. Im just trying to understand what score is really mine. This is so confusing. :( Sorry that my previous post came off as being rude. I was starting to reply and was interupted. I didn't know I saved it without the rest of the post.   It is confusing but I don't think you will find any reasonable posts that suggest that any FAKOs are closer to reality than the scores here on myFICO. Many people want exactly the score a lender will pull and that won't usually happen. What you can get is close or at least get a score that will move in the same direction for the same changes as the scores that a lender sees. Like just about everything, it is always more complicated than it seems at first.   The only time you can be sure what score the lender will use is on a normal mortgage. They will use the EQ FICO sold here, one version later TU FICO, and the EX FICO that used to be available here.   MOST other lenders will use some FICO based score. It could be one of the "Classic" FICOs or it could be enhanced for that specific industry such as a BankCard, Auto, etc. That will make them different but they will be mostly based on a FICO.   You CAN RELY that they will NOT be based on any of the FAKO scores being sold to consumers.   The score that Discover used can possibly be identified if you have more info. Does the approval/denial letter that lists the score have more info? score range, the word FICO, etc.?     ... View more

Your conclusions are completely wrong. I suggest you keep researching until you come up with more information. ... View more

It is Next Gen Precision 2003.   That is the only score from TU with the exact range of 221-950. I must admit I was surprised. Before I looked it up, I would have guessed one of the New Account Models. ... View more

There is no way to set something up through the courts directly. You attorney could ask the court for an order instructing your ex to deposit funds in an escrow account and then they would dispurse them as required for medical bills. If that is not clear, your attorney would hold the funds in escrow.   Small Claims would certainly get the message across, particularly if a Judgement is entered on his credit report.   If the medical expenses are recurring and mostly similar, you could go back to court and get child support modified and then only split the cost above that "regular" amount. Child Support is always temporary and can be modified at any time. ... View more

Sometimes you can see that the reps are making statements based upon your account and sometimes they seem to use canned or generic answers that have little to do with you.   "too much credit available" rarely makes sense unless you have a very short history or no record of using any of the credit that you have. Some creditors report "Amount of last payment" and some Credit Reports show that information. Since you can't be sure they are seeing that info, it is usually best to allow the statement to generate and then pay in full. If you pay before the statement generates, some creditors may not see the use of the account.   Creditors offer you credit when they want new business and according to the risk they want to take at that moment. Chase may have opened you at $500 more because of their situation than yours. A new account is generally not way above or way below your other credit limits but sometimes they are way off. Chase lowered my limits on my two accounts, while CapOne, Discover, BofA, and Amex have raised my limits during the same time. It clearly has more to do with them than it does with me. Amex drastically reduced my limits before that when they were having problems. ... View more

@mrgoattoo wrote: It gets even better.   Talked to a rep at the SF area who issues the CC's and she was telling me that while you may have a 'score' with whatever agency when an inquiry is made that the lender may get a 'modified' credit score that is based on things like CC's or other types of credit specifically and it wont be the same as the score you are seeing when you check, which I guess is more generic rather than specific.   Makes me think that the conclusion I had the other day was right. Stop worrying about the score and just keep my credit report clean.... Saw your last post after my previous post.   The rep was correct EXCEPT the score they gave you was NOT a BankCard Industry Score. It would have been far more logical for them to use one of those.   You last line convinces me that you get it. ... View more

@mrgoattoo wrote: And now I am REALLY confused.   I just wasted $16 bucks to get yet ANOTHER updated TU FICO and it STILL says 770 from this website. How can StateFarm have been giving a score of 739 (source: Trans Union Consumer Relations) if my TU score here is 770 ????   and the score ranges on this paper I got from SF says 221 - 950 which doesnt sound like a FICO score at all. So whats going on with TU...are they using multiple scoring methods...and if so why in the world am I paying for my FICO if TU isnt giving my FICO to CC issuers when they want my score???? That is a FICO Next Gen 2003, which is the latest version of FICO Next Gen. VERY unusual to see a lender using that on a CC application. It was designed to qualify deadbeats for mortgages that they should have never received during the insanity of 2000-2007. That is one of 51 credit scores that are offerered by TU to commercial customers. The one you are getting from here, FICO Classic 98, is useful but not as useful as FICO Classic 04 as used on a mortgage application. The EQ score sold here is a better score, easily the best score sold to all consumers.   There isn't a large difference between the 739 and the 770. You paid for a 770 and they pulled 739. That is a small difference. If you are looking for more precision than that, you are going to be disappointed. ... View more

@shorttough wrote: Just got the number for Beacon 5.0.. its 733 vs 736. 3 point discrepancy. and got an alert after 1 day of pulling the report.. which shows 738 as a result of the inquiry. There will be NO discrepancy. Beacon v5.0 will be the same with the same data as it is the SAME SCORE. I'm assuming that you didn't pull a report from here on the same day so your score was not what you thought it was. Scorepower does not stay updated although it updates each time an alert is triggered. ... View more

Gavron refers to a court case where a non-working spouse can be warned by the court to become self supporting as required in Family Code section 4320. If he does not get a job, he can be assumed to be earning a normal wage. This may require a court ordered examination of his ability to earn.   Date of Separation is only becomes "real" when it is stated in the Judgement of Dissolution. Any date assumed before that can be assumed to be for purposes of settlement.   There is some logic in him proving that he didn't "need" support but you have also proved that you don't "need" child support. Your "need" seems easier to prove in court. I think you should get some advice from an attorney and get your divorce finished. In the big picture, he has only failed to pay his fair share. He can do far more damage.   It could be a good idea to get your divorce finished promptly. ... View more

You will probably be better off if you work with them to make sure the property is completely ready to lease when you leave and do what you can so that they may lease it ASAP. You will only be responsible for their loss of rent and costs so try to make sure it is unleased for as short a time as possible. Hopefully, that amount will be something you can manage to pay.   IF you don't pay the correct amount and IF they turn it over to collection, then it would damage your credit heavily. IF it then becomes a Judgement, it would damage it more. Each damage would be 50-100 points. ... View more

They can come after you with whatever is allowed by law. They can even sue you and it would be up to you to prove that SOL tolled and that you didn't owe the money. CA rarely awards court cost so you could spend a bunch on attorney fees.   It is up to you to decide if settling with them is better than dealing with the collection. Buying another house may make you a better target. ... View more

That is pretty much how it works in the Socialist State of California. In their perverted sense of fairness, the parasite gets to feed on the host until the host is nearly dead.   The good new is that there are no assets for the attorneys to attach. If he is not working and you are, it could be best to ask the court for a "Gavron Warning" sooner, rather than too late. When it comes time to assign support, the court does not look at a distinction between too lazy to work and no income. Support is usually started and backdated to the Date of Separtation so make sure DOS is when he had a job. ... View more

@electra wrote: I have 2 collections remaining on my CRs.  One is for a $640 preschool bill w/DOFD listed (incorrectly) as 11/2008 (it's actually 6/2008 or earlier according to their own documentation).    At any rate, I am in CA so SOL is expired.  I sent DV to creditor and they replied back with the original preschool statements (in both my and ex'es names) and with the CA invoice listed as single account in his name only.  They have tacked on $300-ish in interest.  I sent them a PFD, offering to pay the $640.   A lady called me back from the CA and said they would be happy to delete but only for $935 which is the amount they are claiming with interest.  I explained to her that the debt was out of SOL, was in my ex'es name from whom I am divorcing, and was more than I could afford to pay.  She offered a payment plan. I said no thank you I will assign this debt to my ex in our divorce.  (Good luck to them getting a penny out of him.)  I told her to please call me back if they reconsidered.   I have a couple of questions about this strategy: 1) How much is this collection hurting my score?  It only appears on 2 of my CRs. It should drop off in a couple of years with no further action on my part. I have one other old collection which is medical and I will be doing the Hipaa process to delete as a tried a PFD and they simply marked me as disputing.  The other things I have on my reports are tax liens so I imagine those are much more damaging.  I'm working to get those off as well.   2) Once my divorce is finalized and this debt is assigned to him, can I then dispute it with the CRA's as not mine?  Especially given that the CA's own statement lists it as  a single account in his name?     Thanks for any advice!!   I'm assuming since this is childcare bill that it was after date of marriage. The only way this debt is not yours is if you finish the divorce and the Date of Separation is before the date the services were rendered. That date would be stated in the Judgement of Dissolution something like "date marriage ended".   They can come after you for this regardless of your name not being on the collection and regardless of "how debt is assigned in divorce". The divorce is an agreement between the two of you and the state. Creditors are not involved. The only thing that changes that is when the marriage ended.   If the Judgement of Dissolution states that he must pay that bill, you can take him back to court for contempt if he does not. That doesn't help your credit.   You can pay the bill and then look for reimbursement during divorce but that gets really difficult. It is easier if you think you will owe him money. Is either person keeping a big asset like a home? ... View more

WOW.   I believe any delinquency over 60-day late is a "serious delinqency". The collection and the serious delinquency are hurting your score the most. I guess that is obvious since they are #1 on the list of items hurting your score. I don't know if you can do anything to get a goodwill or pay for delete on the collection. If you can, it would really help. I don't even want to guess about your chances of getting a GW on the CapOne 120-day lates. It is worth a lot of effort if you can get that accomplished.   The way to help #2 is to get the HELOC classed as a Mortgage. My $30K is enough to hit the Mortgage catagory on FICO 04 with EQ and TU. It takes a bit more for EX, I believe $35K. There are a few versions of FICO that required the HELOC to be $50K. Obviously, you are WAY over that. You might want to post a separate item here and see if anyone has ever seen a HELOC over $50K catagorized as Revolving on a FICO report. If they are always considered to be a Mortgage, it could be worth insisting that the lender or the CRA makes sure it is classed as such. I know that would not by easy.   The recent late on #3 may get better when it hits 12 months. This could be very minor compared to the others.   Bleak, but maybe not as bad as it seems. I can easily understand you being really unhappy about this. ... View more

You probably won't be able to file your taxes soon anyway. The IRS is such a mess due to the incompetence of the current government that most of the forms are not even finalyzed yet. Check out what forms you need and see if they are done yet.   How about: Go to small claims and file suit against the school. Try to get the forms so you can serve them ASAP. Name the person you have been dealing with personally in addition to the school. Go after them for damages and it is up to them to try to mitigate the damages. ... View more