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obtaining my Credit Score is driving me crazy. please hep me understand.

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Anonymous
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Re: obtaining my Credit Score is driving me crazy. please hep me understand.


@Anonymouswrote:

First Id like to apologized for my extremely delayed response as I had to remove myself from the real world for a while to prepare for midterms. It is now Spring Break!!! my first college SB. Secondly, Id like to thank you all for such great advice and all the help that was given. Per Credit Karma my TU score is 557, the age of credit history is 4 months, I have 100% payment history, 3 total accounts open (student loan accounts), 0 derogatory marks, and 4 hard inquiries. For my Equifax score I have 100% payment history, 5 month credit history, 0 derogatory marks, 2 total accounts open and 1 hard inquiry. These scores are actually an increase of 1 point since I last reported them to you all.  Also, i have some inquiries that're reported on my credit karma TU score that are false. How do I dispute them?

 


Hello BUBison!  Glad you are back.  Here are some quick thoughts.

 

(1)  Compare your two reports.  One report has two accounts on it, the other has three.  Print out the two reports (Karma will let you do this) and figure out what the account is that appears on one but not the other.  Is it possible that the missing account is the most recently opened account?  If so it may be that the third account will appear soon.

 

(2)  Account age.  The thing we will be interested in most is the age of your oldest account.  Specifically tell us the date opened.  Do this for each report.

 

(3)  FICO scores.  You will not have any true FICO scores until your oldest account (as it reads on the report) is at least 6 months old.  Lack of a true FICO score can be a reason that some CC issuers will reject you, though they may not say so explicitly.  You can obtain your true FICO scores from Credit Check Total for a buck, though you shouldn't do this until your oldest account is at least six months old.

 

(4)  Open vs. Closed accounts.  I am pretty sure that you have no closed accounts.  Your credit reports consist of three open student loans and that is it.  Is that right?

 

(5)  Getting a credit card.  You should be able to get a no annual fee credit card if you are willing to put down a $300 security deposit for it.  There are a number of places that will do that.  Folks here on this forum can advise you about where to go.  Once you have that card, your score will go up a lot, assuming you keep the balance at a positive value but still small and create a payment history of a few months.  For a $200 credit limit, that "small positive balance" would be between $5 and $17.  For a $300 limit it would be between $5 and $26.  Once your scores are much higher you cn apply for an unsecured card.

 

 

 

Message 11 of 17
Anonymous
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Re: obtaining my Credit Score is driving me crazy. please hep me understand.

Thanks for the advice, I will be attempting to pull an actual FICO score. also, creditguydixie yes i only have just those 3 loans on my account and my newest report probably hasn't posted that new loan to my account yet.

Message 12 of 17
Anonymous
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Re: obtaining my Credit Score is driving me crazy. please hep me understand.


@Anonymouswrote:

Thanks for the advice, I will be attempting to pull an actual FICO score. also, creditguydixie yes i only have just those 3 loans on my account and my newest report probably hasn't posted that new loan to my account yet.


Just remember that, as I mentioned earlier, FICO will not give you a score until your report has an account that is at least six months old.

Message 13 of 17
Anonymous
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Re: obtaining my Credit Score is driving me crazy. please hep me understand.

I was able to successfully pull a score and my history is exactly 6 months old. these scores and fators I have now are vastly different from the information I've been receiving from credit karma. my score is over 90 points higher than what credit karma reported me as having. what a difference. credit karma is misleading. yikes.  my real FICO score still reports that I dont have revolving utilization though.

Message 14 of 17
Anonymous
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Re: obtaining my Credit Score is driving me crazy. please hep me understand.

Yup.  It says that because you really don't have any revolving accounts.

 

Huddle with the folks here on the best way to get a secure card, get it, and then keep the balance very low as I suggested,  After a few months of that (assuming the card is on your reports) you score will be much better.

Message 15 of 17
Anonymous
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Re: obtaining my Credit Score is driving me crazy. please hep me understand.

There's lots of good info in this thread for you. I want to just emphasize/clear up some of the things that have been mentioned.


@Anonymouswrote:

these scores and fators I have now are vastly different from the information I've been receiving from credit karma. my score is over 90 points higher than what credit karma reported me as having. what a difference. credit karma is misleading. yikes.  my real FICO score still reports that I dont have revolving utilization though.


This was briefly mentioned above, but I think it's worth repeating after your last post: it's not precisely that CK is misleading you.  All the datapoints on CK are taken from your TU & EQ credit reports and are the same data your bank uses to generate your FICO 8 score (unless your bank gives you an EX-based score).  The important distinction is that your bank is providing a score using a different scoring model, namely FICO 8, to the CK score, which uses the Vantage 3 scoring model.  As mentioned above, FICO 8 scores are the important ones, as that's generally what banks use (along with their own criteria).  The various models and applications of those models can be quite a daunting subject and these forums have lots of great info about it, but the basic idea is just that there are a lot of different models & the important one to focus on is FICO 8 (unless you learn that you're going to be evaluated by a particular institution for a perticular product using some other scoring model that differs in some important way from FICO 8, e.g. for auto loans your installment history is particularly important)

 

As also was briefly mentioned, CK and other similar free sites can still be quite useful because they'll allow you to easily check all the data points that are used to generate your FICO 8 (inquires, account details, any negative items).  CK provides a good way to routinely check that nothing is on there that shouldn't be (fraud, mistakes, etc), and is also a good place to get started if you're new to credit (except when they suggest you need to have 20 or more accounts to have an ideal score, that appears to be a silly tactic to get you to app for more CCs when CK suggests them.  You do need at least 3 credit cards & some data suggest you'll get a boost if you have 5 (reporting AZEO), and a you need few installment loans, including at least 1 currently active, low util installment loan, but  honestly there's quite a lot of breathing room between that and the 20+ they suggest.)

 

Again, as mentioned above, CK doesn't include every piece of info on your credit report, which is why obtaining the actual reports is important.

 

Message 16 of 17
Anonymous
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Re: obtaining my Credit Score is driving me crazy. please hep me understand.

A quick afterthought:

 

I use a similar (but slightly different) method to one described above to get my credit info, namely I use CK & Experian (free version) to get the basic information from my reports once/month (Experian also sends me alerts when new inquires appear) and I'll use my free annual reports to check if anything weird pops up (and request at least 1 of them in a year just to be safe, even if nothing weird comes up)

Message 17 of 17
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