Would like to get some general advice from everyone here. I will lay out my whole story and maybe some of you on here can give me some help.
I feel kind of stupid, I knew I was not an expert on credit score or anything related. But after reading some of the posts on here, I feel even more dumb.
Here is my story.
My wife and I bought our house almost 5 years ago. When we went to the bank 5 years ago and the loan officer mentioned credit score, my wife cringed a bit and said hers wasn't too good, she had some problems with credit cards in the past. I knew that she had these problems, but I knew she was working on it. She consolidated all her credit cards and was making payments to one company. She was in college and these things happen, not like I was mad about it. She now had a job, so things were getting paid now and would eventually be taken care of.
The loan officer confirmed that her credit was poor, but we would still qualify for an FHA loan and first time home buyer, etc etc.
My credit on the other hand was excellent. I don't make enough money to qualify debt to income wise on my own for a loan, so we needed her income.
And like I said, I didn't know much about it at the time, I just wanted to buy our house and be done with it. So that's what we did.
I didn't really think too much about credit scores again until August 2010 when I thought about refinancing our house. I thought I had all my ducks in a row, had all our our financial information and went to visit with the same loan officer who originated our purchase loan.
I figured we would have no problem getting approved for a refinance. Well I was in for quite a surprise, my wife's credit was still shot.
Credit card problem was pretty much taken care of, but now there was a student loan issue. Mainly, my wife apparently didn't like to pay hers. I guess acting on some VERY BAD advice from a friend of hers, whenever my wife needed a few extra dollars here and there, she would decide not to pay her student loan that month. Well her friend told her that they don't charge you as much interest as a credit card company and don't have a bunch of fees etc etc. OH MAN!
The thing is, she actually has 2 student loans through the same bank. Not sure why. I think maybe she took a semester off and when she started up again it was another loan. I guess it doesn't matter.
So now here we are, all sorts of late payments all over her credit report. 30, 60 90 120 lates. All on there.
I handle all the bills in our house, except her student loan. I felt like I got punched in the stomach.
Apparently she as doing this back in 2004-2005 also right before we bought our house, our loan officer didn't really mention it to me then though.
Ok, here is what we have done since. I started paying here student loan myself to make sure it got paid every month.
Then I made another apparently rookie mistake. I signed up for a credit watch for my wife. (not this site, I know, I know, let me have it later, I know now they weren't real FICO scores). Well nothing had changed with her scores in the past 6 months since I took over.
My wife then signed up to have her monthly payment for her student loans taken out of her account. Then next time I checked online, her "score" went up 72 points. There was now a new loan on there, but now nothing was listed as negative for this report.
I thought maybe now we were in business, so then like an idiot I ordered the upgraded 3 "score" report. One of the 3 was exactly the same, one was up like 20 points.
Then I really started checking around. The one score that didn't change , TU, was actually 75 points lower than the one the bank ran in August 2010.
I was wondering how it could be so far off.
Well, I started doing some research as to how close these online "scores" are to the bank scores, that's how I found this site.
Not really happy with myself for paying all of this money for the FAKO scores. I thought they were the real deal.
I am going to sign up on MyFico now and get her real scores from this site and see how she is doing.
Here are some of the facts of the case:
I went back and looked at our original home loan, in September 2006, my Equifax was 806. My wife's was 555. We wouldn't have even qualified for a loan these days.
When we went back to the bank our scores were like this:
Me:, Efax 809, Xpn 831, TU 789
Wife: Efax 605, Xpn 572, Tu 751
This bank uses the middle score for loan purposes.
So my wife's 605 just barely qualified.
Her FAKO scores started like this, take it for what its worth I guess. This was October 2010 or so.
Experian plus was 660, Equifax plus was 643, and TU plus was 675.
Plus Scores as of March were 732, 662, and 675.
So now her bad marks (according to the .com I was using anyways) show this:
2 student loans with multiple lates from 2004-2005. Both loans must have been rolled into new loans at this time. So now both of the new loans also have multiple lates, last of which was July 2010.
At least the 2004-2005 ones will start peeling off soon!
My wife has no credit cards, due to her history of card problems in the past. Should we get her a card? ( I will hold onto it, the .com says one of the factors lowering her score is no open major credit cards)
The only credit inquiry we have was with the bank in August 2010 when I looked at refinancing.
We have one car loan and our original mortgage.
So wife has a total of 3 installment loans and one real estate loan.
I guess that is about it.
I would really like to get our home refinanced before rates jump back up, but I would also like to be able to qualify for a good rate as well. How long should I wait?
I would welcome any and all comments and advice. If you have any questions or need other info to make a comment, I will do what I can to answer.
Sorry this is really rambling.
Thanks in advance.
