Several years ago when I was an officer in the military I had very good credit. I got out and went to grad school, probably didn't throttle the lifestyle back enough, and ended up with about $130k in student loans and $11k in credit card debt. This includes the 8 months it took me to find a job after graduation.
Two years ago I had two 30 day late credit card payments, but most damaging was an overpayment from the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. I couldn't understand why I had an overpayment but the phone number to call about it was constantly busy. After, no joke, 50 or so attempts to even get through to be placed on hold over the course of two weeks I stupidly forgot about it. Long story short, it went to collections and the first time I got called by the collections agency I paid off the balance in full.
I've been steadily chipping away at the debt and since April/May have cut my utilization from 50% to 5%. I know Credit Karma isn't a real score, but I have an A or B in every category, but they still list me as an overall C with a CK score of 684. Is the student loan debt what is holding me down even though I have never, ever been late on a student loan payment? I guess my concern is that they trash my debt/income ratio and will for the foreseeable future. I make around $55k but have a $15k car loan and about $130k in student loan debt.
@llecs wrote:I wouldn't worry about DTI with regards to FICO, because income isn't a part of your FICO score and thus, DTI isn't either.
Of course that makes sense. So I guess it's the VA collections accounts that have been paid since 2011. Credit Karma doesn't list them under any of the categories they score, but it would make sense they would be a major drain on the score.