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Credit monitoring (Questions)

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Credit monitoring (Questions)

Hello everyone!

 

For the past few years I have been using a few differnt services. I notice a little bit of a differnce of course.

 

For credit monitoring I have been using Credit Karma. It alerts me when items have been added to my profile and what my scores are. (Fako I know) With them my scores are as following.

TU: 713

EQ: 740

 

For my other services I use my Discover card/Walmart CC for TU and for EQ I have been using my AMX ED card. These get updated one time per month as most of you know I'm sure.

TU: 745

EQ: 744

 

Now my CC numbers are more in line with each other. CK seems to be all over the place I have seen the number drop by 50 points then come back up the next month! For really no reasoning that I can see. While my CC numbers might drop by 4-5 and go up and down pending on my spending limits and usgae of my CC's. 

 

So now I see that MyFico offers a service. I know many lenders can use of many fico scores. I have seen Fico 9. 3 and so on. Honestly I have no idea what is the best one to use JUST to gage where I stand in general. Also is the credit monitoring and 3 scores a year worth the $330 (Or so)? If so why? I'm not agnest paying for it but it just leads to one more item to pay for! 

 

We have our house and I got GREAT CL on my 2 main CC's. So I wouldn't use it for buying a house or anything but my interest is maybe refi my personal loan of $8000.00 to lower my payment and intertest now that my numbers are GOOD! I got them when my numbers had been more around 690 range from my CU. (10% IR) Can anyone lend any advice here? CU will only go as low as 10%. I could pay it off but I like the payment for credit usage.

 

Thanks in advance! 

Rallaster

Message 1 of 9
8 REPLIES 8
iv
Valued Contributor

Re: Credit monitoring (Questions)

If you just want a basic idea where you stand, the reports (not scores) from CK, and the real FICO 8 scores from your Discover and Amex are a perfectly fine way to keep an eye on things.

 

Do be aware, though, that Amex is not EQ.  The free score from Amex is EX.

EQ8:850 TU8:850 EX8:850
EQ9:847 TU9:847 EX9:839
EQ5:797 TU4:807 EX2:813 - 2021-06-06
Message 2 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Credit monitoring (Questions)

I agree 100% with iv.  He's always got good things to say.

 

One quick thought.  At the end of your post, I think you say that you could easily pay off an $8000 high-interest loan -- but that you don't want to do that because you "like the payment for credit usage."  I am not 100% what you mean, but I am guessing that you mean that you like having a personal loan on your credit reports because you feel like it is good for your score and just establishing that you can make payments on an installment loan.

 

First off, you should definitely pay off the 8k high interest loan.  We can definitely suggest some very low cost ways to have 1-2 personal loans on your profile, if that is something you'd like, but an unsecured personal loan is an expensive choice.  Far better would be a $500 Share Secure loan.

 

Secondly, can you clarify whether you have a mortgage?  If you do, then keeping a personal loan on the books, even a Share Secure loan, won't help you.

 

A better choice would be adding a third credit card.

 

Happy to discuss with you further if you like.

Message 3 of 9
takeshi74
Senior Contributor

Re: Credit monitoring (Questions)


@Anonymous wrote:

CK seems to be all over the place I have seen the number drop by 50 points then come back up the next month!


Different scoring models evaluate report data differently.  Always consider the specific scoring model when referencing scores.  Also consider the relevance of a given model/CRA combo to a given creditor/product.

 

There are creditors that use VantageScores.  If a creditor uses a TU or EQ VantageScore 3.0 then one of the scores provided by CK will be relevant.  If a creditor does not then they will not be relevant.  The same thing applies to any model including the FICO's.  Discover provides a TU FICO 8.  It is only relevant to creditors that use a TU FICO 8.  AmEx provides an EX FICO 8.  It is only relevant for creditors that use an EX FICO 8.

 

You can use whatever you want for monitoring trends with your credit but you need to be looking at the broader trends and not the short term changes.  What I'd really suggest is educating yourself about how credit is generally assessed and focusing on your report data versus fixating on the numbers.  There are number of different scoring models used by creditors and tracking all of them isn't practical for most.  Any score is generated based on the data in a report.  Good reports will lead to good scores.

Message 4 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Credit monitoring (Questions)

Thank you guys!

 

We do have our mortgage already. It will be a year after April of this year. 

 

In short when it comes to the loan I was looking to paying off the $8000 unsecured loan here soon. After that we are getting married and I was thiking about getting a small loan for that. We both have great credit and $0 balances on all of our credit cards. I have 4 major credit cards and 2-3 store cards. I also have about $30K that I could spend in credit but I don't want to charge the wedding to CC and our savings is being saved in case we have uncle murphy move into our home! 

 

So any advice on wedding loans? I can pay the $8K today if it came down to it. I'd like a good interest rate as well. (Fixed of course.) 

 

Thanks a lot everyone!

 

Rallaster

Message 5 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Credit monitoring (Questions)

Hey Rallaster!  Here are some thoughts, some certain and some tentative.

 

You mention that both of you have $0 currently on all your credit cards.  This is definitely hurting your scores.  It looks to FICO as though you don't know how to manage credit card debt.  You will both quickly gain a fair number of points by each resolving to use one card at least once a month.  All you need to do is show a small positive balance on your statement.  Then after the statement prints, pay the amount in full.  It can be small amount if you like and it only has to be on one card. 

 

As far as unsecured personal loans, there is no low-interest option that I know of.  That's what happens when you ask a bank to give you cash but don't give it any collateral.  There's a much greater risk that you could walk away with the money.  So they always charge much higher interest than for (say) a car loan or a home loan, where the bank can take the car or home if you default.

 

The one exception to what I described are lenders who specialize in giving lower interest unsecured personal loans, but they typically only give these best rates to clients with ultra ULTRA high credit scores.  E.g. at least 780.  Yours are 745.  Lightstream is an example of such a lender.

 

How long are you guessing it would take you to pay off the cost of the wedding?  If you think you could do it in a year, your best option (given your competing desires) might be to apply for a credit card that gives you a 0% introductory rate for 12 or even 18 months -- and use that card for the wedding.  Before you do that, however, I would wait until you have one CC reporting a positive balance to the credit bureaus, which will raise your scores significantly and make you more attractive to the CC issuer from which you hope to get the 0% offer.

Message 6 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Credit monitoring (Questions)

Message 7 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Credit monitoring (Questions)


@Anonymous wrote:

Hey Rallaster!  Here are some thoughts, some certain and some tentative.

 

You mention that both of you have $0 currently on all your credit cards.  This is definitely hurting your scores.  It looks to FICO as though you don't know how to manage credit card debt.  You will both quickly gain a fair number of points by each resolving to use one card at least once a month.  All you need to do is show a small positive balance on your statement.  Then after the statement prints, pay the amount in full.  It can be small amount if you like and it only has to be on one card. 

 

As far as unsecured personal loans, there is no low-interest option that I know of.  That's what happens when you ask a bank to give you cash but don't give it any collateral.  There's a much greater risk that you could walk away with the money.  So they always charge much higher interest than for (say) a car loan or a home loan, where the bank can take the car or home if you default.

 

The one exception to what I described are lenders who specialize in giving lower interest unsecured personal loans, but they typically only give these best rates to clients with ultra ULTRA high credit scores.  E.g. at least 780.  Yours are 745.  Lightstream is an example of such a lender.

 

How long are you guessing it would take you to pay off the cost of the wedding?  If you think you could do it in a year, your best option (given your competing desires) might be to apply for a credit card that gives you a 0% introductory rate for 12 or even 18 months -- and use that card for the wedding.  Before you do that, however, I would wait until you have one CC reporting a positive balance to the credit bureaus, which will raise your scores significantly and make you more attractive to the CC issuer from which you hope to get the 0% offer.


Thank you CreditGuy! We do use our cards. Sorry I should have made that more clear. We just don't carry a blance on any account. I use my AMX ED And Discover IT card mostly. The future wife pretty much only uses her own Discover IT card. So we do have credit reporting outside the personal loan, home loan and so on. We are we looking at taking out maybe a 10-15K loan and that would cover the wedding and honeymoon. Paying it back should be no issue. We would just like to hang onto our cash in case the house has some major melt down. Also thanks for the links below!

 

Ral

Message 8 of 9
Appleman
Valued Contributor

Re: Credit monitoring (Questions)

Prosper, LendingClub and SoFi.com are all places that will give you an idea of amount, interest rate and term with a soft pull only. Be very careful about advancing beyond the initial quote as that will result in a hard pull.

Message 9 of 9
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