I'm new here and have a FICO question

[Anonymous]

First, I would like to thank you in advance, for any and all help.

Where I am now:

Fico score........737

accounts...........36 

with balances......7

I'm trying to increase my Fico score so I can refinance my house, shop and credit cards into one payment.

1.) Is it better to close the accounts without balances or to have the amount available made smaller?

     If it's better to close the accounts, how do I determine which are the best ones to close?

2.) Of the 36 accounts several have been closed for a number of years, how long are they going to be on my credit report?

I'm sure there are MANY other questions I'll have you.

Tank you again,

Terry

[haulingthescoreup]

Welcome aboard! Time for a homework assignment first. Please read through this, and then come back with specific questions. I'm in Firefox at the moment, so this won't post as a link --you'll need to copy/ paste into your browser window:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=ficoscoring&thread.id=2654

I'm guessing that the FICO score you gave is EQ? That's actually a great score, and it should get you pretty much whatever you're looking for, depending on the history behind it. You have two other FICO scores as well, EX and TU.

Did someone tell you to close accounts? Unless you have annual fees on an account, or it is tempting you to overspend, there is generally no reason to close accounts. Some people do get a message about too many accounts, but since you have so few that are open, I don't know that it's really hurting you. (Often when your scores get well into the 700's, the comments get a little silly.)

Closed accounts stay on your report for 10 years. If there is any bad history on them, it falls off 7 years after it occurred, and the account itself remains.

Anyway, PLEASE read Credit Scoring 101 first (the thread above), and then you'll have a good idea of what you want to ask!

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your reply,

I'll read Credit Scoring 101.

[Anonymous]

I was trying to compare my husbands and my Fico status and I Unfortunately started this account under my husbands login. I'm a 47 year old computer dummy

So now my name is Green_Chevelle

I read a lot of credit scoring 101 (Great info)

But I'm not sure at how to go about  fixing my ratio of my revolving balances to my credit limit.

Right now it's at an embarrassing 33%

Of the 36 accounts on my credit report

22 are closed mortgage, auto and cc accounts

14 are currently open

5 have balances (CC)

1 is a home loan

1 is a home improvement loan

7 are paid off credit cards

Of the 22 closed accounts I read that they will come off my report in 10 years.

Is that 10 years from the last activity or 10 years from the closing date?

Thank you again for any and all help.

Terry

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I was trying to compare my husbands and my Fico status and I Unfortunately started this account under my husbands login. I'm a 47 year old computer dummy

So now my name is Green_Chevelle

I read a lot of credit scoring 101 (Great info)

But I'm not sure at how to go about fixing my ratio of my revolving balances to my credit limit.

Right now it's at an embarrassing 33%

Of the 36 accounts on my credit report

22 are closed mortgage, auto and cc accounts

14 are currently open

5 have balances (CC)

1 is a home loan

1 is a home improvement loan

7 are paid off credit cards

Of the 22 closed accounts I read that they will come off my report in 10 years.

Is that 10 years from the last activity or 10 years from the closing date?

Thank you again for any and all help.

Terry

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Congrats on the paint job!

OK, util is the easiest thing to fix. Do you know when your open accounts report to the credit bureaus? It's usually, but certainly not always, on your statement date --the date that the statement "drops" or posts, not when the minimum payment is due. The util figure that everyone obsesses about is the util on your revolving accounts, which generally means credit cards. Loans, including mortgages and home improvement loans, are much less volatile on your reports. For instance, I paid off a student loan recently, and I think two scores stayed the same and one dropped 1 point. So I wouldn't worry about those too much.

Anyway, assuming that your cards report on their statement dates, just check your balance on-line and pay it down to your target figure about 4-5 days before the statement is due to drop. I'm not sure which accounts are still open --if you have only five with balances, and they're all CC's, are you including your home loans? Ideally, you want to have fewer than half of ALL open accounts showing balances --this includes mortgages, car loans, etc, as well as CC's. I would aim for having 6 or fewer of all your open accounts show balances. Looks like 2 are the home loans, so that means letting 4 CC's max show balances. Fewer than that is probably better. Of the cards that report balances, they should show under 10%, or even better, under 5%. (I hope I counted your accounts right --got a little lost there!)

If you don't have a lot of late payments, collections, charge-offs, judgments, and other baddies cluttering your reports, and if you have money to throw at your accounts, you should see a very quick score jump. You just have to allow your accounts to report their new balances, and then for the CRA's to get around to posting them.

If you really want to know who has reported how much, check out credit monitoring services that allow daily report pulls, like TrueCredit. Ignore the scores, they're FAKO, and they'll confuse the heck out of you. But this will allow you to see when everything is posting and determine when is a good time to pull your FICO's again. Hope this helps!

Oops--almost forgot: as far as closed accounts go, they should report for 10 years from the closing date. If there were any baddies on them, these will fall off 7 years after the dates that they occurred, leaving a minimum of three clean years reporting on that account. So for instance, you had an account with a 30-day late in March 2002, and you closed the account in June 2005. The 30-day will show up until March 2009, and the account itself will report until June 2015.

[Anonymous]

BTW- I love Chevelle's

[positronicshell]

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@Anonymous wrote:

1.) Is it better to close the accounts without balances or to have the amount available made smaller?

---

i think hauling was pretty thorough on answering both your questions but this part of your question caught my attention.

unless you have cc with limits over $50,000 (which sometimes start reporting differently) or don't trust yourself not to overspend, you should not ask to have any credit limits reduced. in fact getting cli on your cc's would help bring down your 33% util instantly.

dh was at 27% util + i was able to get several soft pull cli for him recently + brought his util down to 16%.

just thought i would throw that in there.

xoxox jane

[Anonymous]

If you really want to know who has reported how much, check out credit monitoring services that allow daily report pulls, like True Credit. Ignore the scores, they're FAKO, and they'll confuse the heck out of you. But this will allow you to see when everything is posting and determine when is a good time to pull your FICO's again. Hope this helps!

You said to "ignore  the scores they're Fako" What does that mean?

I signed up for the TransUnion quartly monotoring,  is this a fico or fako?

I'm sorry if I'm asking dumb questions, It's all new to me.

Terry

Message Edited by green_chevelle on 12-10-2007 08:42 PM

[haulingthescoreup]

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green_chevelle wrote:

You said to "ignore  the scores they're Fako" What does that mean?

I signed up for the TransUnion quartly monotoring,  is this a fico or fako?

I'm sorry if I'm asking dumb questions, It's all new to me.

Terry

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As they always say, the only dumb question is the one that you don't ask. It took me four months to figure out what I think I know now, and I learn something new literally every day.

Fake FICO's = FAKO's. The scores that display on TrueCredit look a lot like FICO's, but they're not. No lender uses them, so they're terribly misleading to consumers. The same is true or scores from other 3-in-1 monitoring services, directly from Experian (the "PLUS" score) and directly from TU, with one exception (as follows.)

Do you get your TU quarterly monitoring service either from the FICO site here or from transunioncs.com? If so, and if the scores have a kind of silly-looking gold seal on them, they are FICO's. Basically, you can get all three of your FICO scores here, you can also get your EQ FICO and Scorewatch here or from Equifax, and you can get your TU FICO and quarterly monitoring service here or from the transunioncs site --note the cs at the end. It's not on the plain old TU site.

A score must say FICO, and it must have the gold seal, to be a FICO.

[Anonymous]

Thank you,

yes,  I purchased the TU quarterly monitoring service from the FICO site here.

There sure is a lot of stuff to read on this board.

Thanks again for all the usefull info

Terry