Health > FICO = Break

[Anonymous]

Funny how things work out.  I've been working on clearing up my credit and have been slowly but surely churning those FICO numbers up from the low 500's to now breaching that seemingly elusive 600 barrier.  Kinda proud of my hard work ... then BAM!  A pesky wisdom tooth decides to start making trouble and what does he do?  Yup that's right ... the little moron decides to get his other two wisdom tooth pals to join in effectively creating a gang in my otherwise, sparkling-clean chopper house.  So ... a dentist and two oral surgeons later (one for 2nd opinion) I went in to have these rogue fellers cut out. <insert appropriate curses here>

A whopping $4,000 with only $200 covered by insurance left me with the decision to: Max out my Amex and attempt to locate funds for the remaining amount.  Thinking about it and scanning the whogavemecredit.com site I took a shot, browsed on over to CareCredit, entered my deets, pressed submit, looked away *knowing* that all too familiar "we'll contact you blah lah blah" would be mocking me when I looked back, but ... wait ... WHAT?  I was approved!  And for the full amount I requested!  WooHoo!  And the really awesome part of this: I qualified for a 6-month no interest promotion.  Neat!

This is what it's been all about: getting myself back to a place where I don't have to worry as much.  And although I just received a new unsecured credit line and maxed it out the very next day I know the good financial habits I have created will enable me to pay this down quickly.  So yeah ... I've killed my util but as I am not in the market for a major purchase anytime soon (the car can wait another 6 months) I know I'll be fine afterall ... Health > FICO.  Thanks to advice from my peeps here on these forums I was able to take care of everything without undue stress being added.  Thanks everyone!  Meanwhile, I'll recover from the slice & dice and garden what I have as I pay everything down and in the end, I have another source of credit for health-related issues and, as a bonus, a util booster!

[S7]

Fantastic!!!!

[Anonymous]

I'm glad this turned out well. Not to sound paranoid, but I read an article once about a kid with a toothache. He didn't get the care for it he needed, and it eventually got infected and turned into blood poisoning. No FICO score is worth a potentially life-threatening illness.

Sending you "fast healing" thoughts

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to give an update ...

Ok ... so Care Credit (GE Money Bank) came through for me and that combined with Amex and savings allowed me to take care of the near $5000 bill for the wisdom teeth extraction and dental bone grafts.  I stil have a crown left then ... TaDa! ... Adult braces.  Yeah.  Fun.

Anyhoo ...so much discussion has been made regarding just exactly how utilization will affect your FICO and since I basically temporarily maxed everything out I can tell you boy does it hurt!  And quickly!  I had reached over 600 on my FICOs after working hard and within one month of maxing things out BOOM ... all are below 515.  Ouch.  Mind you, I had a new CC show up (GE Money Bank's Care Credit account) but other than that: all payments made on time and no other changes ... only utilization.  Let the tears begin.

Fortunately, I will have my utilization back down to below 30% by the end of November and back down to the sweet spot of 7% - 9% by the end of December.  It'll be interesting to see just how fast and to what level they return.  I'll keep y'all updated.

So moral of the story: utilization matters folks!  BIG time!

[Shogun]

Congrats!

[Anonymous]

Update:  Unfortunately I did not reach my goals of paying everything down as I intended <BOO HISS> due to more ... yup ... dental garbage.  It seems the little gang of wisdom teeth hammering away in my mouth did a bit of damage requiring another bone graft and a dual sinus lift.  Yes.  I can tell you: not fun.  So basically as I've paid down the credit used to take care of these issues I've simply had to place more right back on the cards so ... the CareCredit is currently at 90% as well as the others: overall util: 93%.  Now *that* hurts.  But you know, Health > FICO.

Fortunately through all of this I've been able to PIF a CA (Portfolio Recovery) and last week sent out GW's to them and the OC (Chase Bank).  Meanwhile, I've cut my entire budget back to enable me to pay off everything as soon as possible.  When my overall util hit a horrible 97% my FICOs dropped to as low as 514.  Yes.  I wept.

Now I am back up to 542, everything is being "Paid as Agreed" so I am confident once I have my util back to acceptable norms I should once again see my FICOs jump back up.  And who knows - if these two baddies are removed (it will leave me with 3) and my util returns to the 9% average I'll hop into the upper 600's.  Then one by one those other baddies will be hacked away to the point I'm thrown into a nicer bucket.  Perhaps that pewter credit bucket I saw once rather than this tin bucket I'm splashing around in?  Oh well - keepin' up the faith and in the meantime ... Receiving a surgically broken jaw though the entire ordeal.  Wow ... now this has truly been a life lesson: Get baddies on your CR and get your jaw broken :-O

[Shogun]

Get that util paid down and you'll be doing good.  Good luck on the GW and hopefully you're all fixed up now.

[newhouse2013]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Just wanted to give an update ...

Ok ... so Care Credit (GE Money Bank) came through for me and that combined with Amex and savings allowed me to take care of the near $5000 bill for the wisdom teeth extraction and dental bone grafts.  I stil have a crown left then ... TaDa! ... Adult braces.  Yeah.  Fun.

Anyhoo ...so much discussion has been made regarding just exactly how utilization will affect your FICO and since I basically temporarily maxed everything out I can tell you boy does it hurt!  And quickly!  I had reached over 600 on my FICOs after working hard and within one month of maxing things out BOOM ... all are below 515.  Ouch.  Mind you, I had a new CC show up (GE Money Bank's Care Credit account) but other than that: all payments made on time and no other changes ... only utilization.  Let the tears begin.

Fortunately, I will have my utilization back down to below 30% by the end of November and back down to the sweet spot of 7% - 9% by the end of December.  It'll be interesting to see just how fast and to what level they return.  I'll keep y'all updated.

So moral of the story: utilization matters folks!  BIG time!

---

Yes it does!! my utilization went up to 77% and my score dropped 30 points.  I will pay it down to 5% in about  a week so I am not too upset but it stll sucks. I hope you get better soon though.  

[starry1]

Good for you. And yes, your health is infinitely more important than a number assigned to you by some AI computer somewhere. You'll be back on track soon.

[Anonymous]

Update: when it rains it pours! Had a few medical items to take care of as I previously mentioned. Well, right in the middle of it all I received the dreaded pink-slip from my employer. Yup, my entire department is gone. Ugh.

Luckily, the major dental items were taken care of so I'm fine with that and I don't really have any debt - only two items on my CR but I'll just need to sit on those a while. Unfortunately, my payment schedule had to be revised. Nothing late, mind you ... just s l o w e d down a bit. As of two days ago I'm now at a 19% UTIL - I was at 70% last month so I'm kinda anxious to see what sort of bump I'll receive and will be checking the 'ole scores on Friday. Hoping to see a decent rebound from that almost 98% UTIL that happened. Yay!

Meanwhile, I've seemingly hit a wall with GWs: all since November coming back declined ... poo!!! Fortunately, I'll be "okay" and I'm placing all the cards in the sock drawer for the time being - they are basically at 10% UTIL except for Care Credit which is at 39%. I'll update on Friday - will be kinda neat to see what a 98% to 70% to 19% UTIL drop looks like.