Dumb Question of the Day

[Anonymous]

I apologize in advance for this question, but if my FICO scores vary greatly from the 3 agencies, which is my FICO score.  Is it an average of the three?  

[Gardenhand]

You have Fico scores from each from each of the three agencies. Sometimes creditors will pull scores from all three bueras and use the middle score. Other times they will pull just one score from one reporting agency and use that to base their decision. 

You have more then one Fico score. Actually you have more then one score for each reporting agency depending on what Fico scoring model they are using. 

[AzaleaB]

This is not a dumb question. The whole FICO thing is fairly confusing. There are 49 different scores - some optimized for mortgages, auto loans, bankcards and the plain vanilla 08 scores (Fico 2008) with Fico09 on the horizon. If you buy the EQ or EX credit reports on MyFico, you will now see some of the other scores. They mostly trend in the same direction but there some differences. If you are applying for credit cards, typically the lender pulls the FICO08 score from of TU, EX, or EQ. If you are applying for a mortgage, they typically pull FICO04 scores from all three. There is a sticky here somewhere with more detail or maybe one of the experts can elaborate.