Hey everyone! Funny question.
I see people on here saying they managed to max out their FICO to 850. However, is a score of 300 possible? How could you obtain a score like that? 500 seems like a REALLY low score, 300 just seems otherworldly and unobtainable.
I see people on here saying they managed to max out their FICO to 850. However, is a score of 300 possible? How could you obtain a score like that? 500 seems like a REALLY low score, 300 just seems otherworldly and unobtainable.
Right, but having any type of account will contribute to "account mix" and get you a few points wouldnt it?
I wish I could recall the details a bit better, however I seem to recall a thread perhaps close to a year ago where a gentleman said he was in the mid-300's or so. If I remember correctly, he had gone through a very ugly divorce and somehow pretty much every account went south, I believe he said from something his ex-wife had done. I recall reading the message, thinking that one would really have to work at getting your score that low!
I would think as far as the risk factor assigned to a score that low, the FICO scoring God's are pretty much guaranteeing that the loan will default!
I would think as far as the risk factor assigned to a score that low, the FICO scoring God's are pretty much guaranteeing that the loan will default!
@EW800 wrote:
I wish I could recall the details a bit better, however I seem to recall a thread perhaps close to a year ago where a gentleman said he was in the mid-300's or so. If I remember correctly, he had gone through a very ugly divorce and somehow pretty much every account went south, I believe he said from something his ex-wife had done. I recall reading the message, thinking that one would really have to work at getting your score that low!
I would think as far as the risk factor assigned to a score that low, the FICO scoring God's are pretty much guaranteeing that the loan will default!
Hey, that was me!
I was only divorced for about a month. My daughter needed a clarinet for school and they informed us that we could rent them at a local music store. I walked in to rent the clarinet and the salesperson said that they needed to do a credit check before renting it. No problem I thought. A few minutes later the owner of the store comes out and tells me he can't rent it to me because my credit score was 350! We had a brief conversation where I informed him that I had just gotten divorced and would have to check into why it was so low. He said he came out personally to see what a person with a 350 score looked like and was surprised to see that it was a middle aged guy with a white button down and khakis! The. Most. Humiliating. Experience. Of. My. Life.
This happened back in 1997 and FICO scores and credit reports were kind of mysterious to most consumers. (Pre-Internet) I did know that my score was over 800 less than a year ago at the time when my wife and I decided on a friendly divorce. We sold our big house in the burbs and bought a smaller house for my wife and daughter and a condo that was located close by for me.
To make a long and ugly story short:
My wife let the mortgage on her house go into foreclosure. (My name was also on it!)
Several months before our divorce she applied for 7 credit cards using my name (And great scores!) and hid them from me. She maxxed out every single one of them and never made a payment!
Needless to say, it was a nightmare! The lenders started calling me everyday wanting payment in full. Threatening fraud charges etc. It was ugly.
I was a small business owner at the time a had to use pretty much every last penny I had to get out from under these debts.
I vowed to never be put in this situation again and cancelled all my credit cards and paid cash for everything from there on out. It wasn't until 2012 when I discovered MyFICO and decided that I needed to start using credit again. MyFICO couldn't generate a score back in 2012 when I started rebuilding because there wasn't anything on my reports. I've been rebuilding for about 3 years now.
Look at the bright side...
I found a new wife a few years after that and we have 2 great kids. We moved to a warm climate state and are living life to its fullest!
Yep, you wrote the thread I was thinking of! I remember the bit about the owner of the music store coming out to see what a 350 looks like!
I am SO pleased to read that things are much improved for you now!!
I am SO pleased to read that things are much improved for you now!!
So much for the friendly divorce, eh? But then again, if there was any doubt about whether the divorce should be done... nope, no more doubt
Glad to hear you managed to get through that mess.
And the result of having a mid-300's score is, the person with their name on the defaulting / late paying / skip town credit gets a whole lot of phone calls. The landline that I was assigned when I moved into my house in 2007 has had a constant stream of collectors looking for a particular person. Even 7 years after I got the phone line. I tell one collector, they promise to update the file, but because this person has so many collections out there, this phone number has taken on a life of its own.
@Imperfectfuture wrote:
There was that ID theft movie (comedy, forget the name), where the gal left him almost that low, and the boss proclaimed homeless people had higher credit scores. A vicious attack from ex can do that.
Yep... they can leave your score so low that you couldn't buy a hamburger on credit.