topic Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio in General Credit Topics

Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:30:44 GMT

I know that this is not officially part of FICO or even any so called FAKO scores but Credit karma has a section where they analyze debt to income ratio. They get the income figures from the individual but I have absolutely no idea how they calculate the monthly debt. One might think that they add up the monthly debt payments but I can't get there using my mortgage payment, and any other payment that I can figure out for my HELOC and CC.

Just out of curiosity I was wondering if anyone knows their methodology. I diud ask them but received a non answer.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

MarineVietVet — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:20:42 GMT

I'm only guessing here but on credit reports the monthly payments are listed for all the accounts. Could TU be getting the amounts that way?

From a BK years ago to:
9/09 EX pulled by lender 802
3/10 EQ- 800
6/10 TU -772

You can do the same thing with hard work

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Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 01:11:42 GMT

Like I said the total they show bears no relationship to anything. In my case we are only talking three accounts but I cannot replicate their numbers.

I was just wondering if anyone might have some insight. It was a shot min the dark.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

RobertEG — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 01:27:14 GMT

Total debt, total assets, and total income are not in your cedit report, and thus not part of your credit scoring.

Sure, some credit decisions are based, with individual creditors, on information that they request from you about income, total assets, total liabilites, and these are usually only requested by higher-principal lendors, such as mortgage or auto lendors. If requested, this is confidential personal information that cannot be marketed to a "creditkarma." And there is no way to post such info to your CR.

If they somehow provided your confidential information, aside from what is in your credit file, to others, such as someone called creditkarma, I think you have a case of serious breach of confidentiality.

I dont care as much about how they are using it as I am about their right to even have it.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 01:53:09 GMT

Guys please read the post before you respond!

I already explained how they got that info but the question is about how they are utilizing the info that IS in the credit report.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

MarineVietVet — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:02:51 GMT

@RobertEG wrote:
Total debt, total assets, and total income are not in your cedit report, and thus not part of your credit scoring.

Sure, some credit decisions are based, with individual creditors, on information that they request from you about income, total assets, total liabilites, and these are usually only requested by higher-principal lendors, such as mortgage or auto lendors. If requested, this is confidential personal information that cannot be marketed to a "creditkarma." And there is no way to post such info to your CR.

If they somehow provided your confidential information, aside from what is in your credit file, to others, such as someone called creditkarma, I think you have a case of serious breach of confidentiality.
I dont care as much about how they are using it as I am about their right to even have it.

That's not what I said. I said the monthly payments for my accounts are in my TU report and Credit Karma is affiliated with TU. CK also lists my total balances very accurately. All the information on CK is very up to date and mirrors my own records. I just don't look at the score there.

I also don't look at the debt ratio feature so I can't comment further about why the OP's ratio doesn't match his own figures.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:15:42 GMT

I could be WAY off on this but I believe he was trying to repond to the original post and not your comment.

But this thread is really proceeding strangely that's for sure.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

MarineVietVet — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:54:23 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I could be WAY off on this but I believe he was trying to repond to the original post and not your comment.

But this thread is really proceeding strangely that's for sure.

LOL. Yes that happens from time to time. It's one of the drawbacks of the written word. It's hard to read someone's intent on a computer screen.

I hope you get an answer to your question.

ETA: If I highjacked your thread I apologize.

From a BK years ago to:
9/09 EX pulled by lender 802
3/10 EQ- 800
6/10 TU -772

You can do the same thing with hard work

Credit Scoring 101
Common Abbreviations
Frequently Requested Threads
Whats In Your FICO Score

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:10:15 GMT

I would not worry too much about it. Such is life on internet message boards. Sometimes you get an answer right away and sometimes you just get people that wnat to comment ona side issue----sometimes legitimately---or that have not really read the original post.

In the ggrand scheme of things I don't really need thjis answer. I was just trying to satisfy my own curiosity. I will just consider it another unsolved mystery if finance, the internet or whatever.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

BungalowMo — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:58:29 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I know that this is not officially part of FICO or even any so called FAKO scores but Credit karma has a section where they analyze debt to income ratio. They get the income figures from the individual but I have absolutely no idea how they calculate the monthly debt. One might think that they add up the monthly debt payments but I can't get there using my mortgage payment, and any other payment that I can figure out for my HELOC and CC.

Just out of curiosity I was wondering if anyone knows their methodology. I diud ask them but received a non answer.

I'm not sure what you mean by "you can't get there..."

Here's how I figure they do it. Yes, we provide monthly income. And depending on when you pull a fresh FAKO score, they will see in your report, the last payment amount you made on each acct. For instance, even if you make 2 cc payments during the month prior to the last due date ...only the second payment is recorded (both are credited, obviously), so they assume that to be your regular monthly payment. And all those collectively are your monthly debt. But...just as any other credit pull you make, it is simply a snapshot in time & can be right on the money, or WAY off target!

That is why this is not a factor in the FICO scoring system. It's far too subjective. You can have a 2k balance on a cc with a monthly payment of $40 minimum. One month you happen to have 1k you can toss on that card. FICO would never assume 1k per mo on this acct to be part of a normal monthly debt payment.

I hope that made sense! Much of CreditKarma, for me, is merely entertainment. I don't put much stock into their findings. It's simply free entertainment.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:10:54 GMT

@BungalowMo wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:
I know that this is not officially part of FICO or even any so called FAKO scores but Credit karma has a section where they analyze debt to income ratio. They get the income figures from the individual but I have absolutely no idea how they calculate the monthly debt. One might think that they add up the monthly debt payments but I can't get there using my mortgage payment, and any other payment that I can figure out for my HELOC and CC.

Just out of curiosity I was wondering if anyone knows their methodology. I diud ask them but received a non answer.

I'm not sure what you mean by "you can't get there..."

Here's how I figure they do it. Yes, we provide monthly income. And depending on when you pull a fresh FAKO score, they will see in your report, the last payment amount you made on each acct. For instance, even if you make 2 cc payments during the month prior to the last due date ...only the second payment is recorded (both are credited, obviously), so they assume that to be your regular monthly payment. And all those collectively are your monthly debt. But...just as any other credit pull you make, it is simply a snapshot in time & can be right on the money, or WAY off target!

That is why this is not a factor in the FICO scoring system. It's far too subjective. You can have a 2k balance on a cc with a monthly payment of $40 minimum. One month you happen to have 1k you can toss on that card. FICO would never assume 1k per mo on this acct to be part of a normal monthly debt payment.

I hope that made sense! Much of CreditKarma, for me, is merely entertainment. I don't put much stock into their findings. It's simply free entertainment.

What I mean is that when I apply those rules I still don't get their total debt payment. In fact the figure they list fluctuates day by day even if there is nota similar change in the amounts paid (or billed).

As for whether this is part of FICO we alla gree it is not. This wasa simple question about how that site calcualtes the total debt payment side of things. I had asked them but receiveda non answer (we feel our total is correct) but I thought that someone here might know specifically what they do----perhaps they had done some detective work on their own.

As I said above I have pretty much written off gettinga conclusive answer. Evertyone is specualting which is natural and i should have known that. It was unlikely at best taht I would run across someone who actually knew how they calcualted the figure.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

haulingthescoreup — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:56:15 GMT

Is their figure higher or lower than you would have come up with? Is the difference equal to the amount that you pay on something (or minimum payment?)

I understand what you're saying. It's like trying to balance a checkbook or spreadsheet, and consistently getting two very different answers, and looking for what's different, I guess.

FWIW (which isn't much), I used to get strange util figures on my TU FICO score report. Sometimes I could tell they were counting everything that needed to be counted, and other times, the percentage they came up with didn't reflect anything close to what it should have been. I'd keep running the numbers, leaving out various accounts, but I never could duplicate their math.

I know you're talking about D-T-I rather than revolving util, but at least on my end, I've seen that TU (and therefore maybe CK) uses a different form of math from the one that I've used for the past 55 years.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:48:45 GMT

It is always higher but as I said the amount fluctuates almost daily so no it is not off by a set amount nor does it seem to be consistent with some individual bill.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

llecs — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:10:59 GMT

FWIW, I just pulled an updated CK and also pulled a new CR via transunion.com and the monthly obligations matched at $403. All I have are CCs and included everyone except for the Amex. And my DTI sways back and forth too, but does so when new accounts update.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

jaysdad2k — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 05:47:43 GMT

I just checked my CK DTI and my latest Creditkeeper FAKO.

I have one CC with a balance and the minimum payment is shown, and this month the stupid Cap One AF of $39 hit, and it showed a minimum payment amount of $15.

Those two plus my car payment add up to the "monthly obligation" from CK. Since the Cap One balance hit, my DTI went up 1%. It seems that the DTI is dependent on whatever the CC reports as the minimum payment. A few months ago, I had a balance hit on Discover and they showed a minimum payment of $40. I PIF'ed it before any interest accrued.

I guess it does make sense to know how much we must pay each month based on our income for that month.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:35:12 GMT

Maybe there is something funny in my case. I have a mortgage---that is pretty straightforward, a CC ( a bit more complicated) and a HELOC. I will go back and see if they are using actual payments or mimum for the HELOC and what they did for the CC. So far I get a pretty high number but maybe I am doing something wrong.

Odd but I I thank you guys for showing me what worked in your cases.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

llecs — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 01:12:02 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

Maybe there is something funny in my case. I have a mortgage---that is pretty straightforward, a CC ( a bit more complicated) and a HELOC. I will go back and see if they are using actual payments or mimum for the HELOC and what they did for the CC. So far I get a pretty high number but maybe I am doing something wrong.

Odd but I I thank you guys for showing me what worked in your cases.

Remember, in order to accurately compare, you'd have to pull your CK report and your TU report from somewhere at the same time. It's always possible to have your statement say one thing and your TU report say another.

Re: Creditkarma.com and Debt to income Ratio

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 15:15:36 GMT

Excellent point. I still see no relationship but I think that is the way it is supposed to be. Perhaps they are doing something unusual with my HELOC. That is certainly the wild card in my credit deck.

I dida bit of credit history forensics. It appears that...

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:33:26 GMT

I dida bit of credit history forensics. It appears that the total paymetns that credit karma show most closely resemble the toital payments I made------not what was billed and are almost always off somewhat. In the months where I made an unusually high HELOC payment things really went astray but that still leds me to believe that the wild card in the deck is HELOC. Maybe they adjust tahtfor some reeason I cannot really tell.

But thansk to all for their help.