Question About My Score

[Juan123]

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, long time viewer first time poster here to be inspired to fix my credit!!..

I'm a 22 year old student with a full time job as a bank teller for capital one...

I have 7 credit cards and 2 student loans, the credit cards all have limits below $1000, only 2 are store cards the rest are mastercard\visa's if that even matters.... i recently requested a credit line increase on my oldest card which has been idling at a $500 credit limit for the past 4 years and was declined.

I immediatly signed up for the equifax score watcher service at $16.95 a month to monitor my score, i was a little shocked to see my score was at a 578... my question is... why? i've never missed a payment or was late on any of my cards. my student loans aren't in repayment yet so does that affect my score?? what can i do to jump that score up to the high 600's or low 700s?

[llecs]

Welcome to the forums!

So, it was ScoreWatch you subscribed to? Was it purchased from here? If so, look at the report. The telling sign is pages 2 & 3 of that report. That lists the top 4 positive and/or negative reasons why your score is the way it is. If you improve those factors on the negative side, then you'll start to see some improvement in FICO. You would also want to look at the Credit At-A-Glance page. If any item (e.g. collections, et al) has a red flag next to it, then that's a score drainer too. Finally, look in the Accounts page. This lists all OC accounts. There's a small column with a red flag at the top. Any account with a red flag next to it would be seen as a negative too. And of course any judgments or public records are a negative. Any collections or charge-offs, paid or unpaid, are a score-killer too. Another big factor (definitely not the only negative here) is utilization on your CCs. Pay them all off but one and get the one to report a small balance. But I suspect you have something else going on in your EQ report.

[Juan123]

i did as you said, i saw no red flags on anything also i have nothing in collections or any charge-offs, but looking at the 4 negative reasons one listed as you said was credit utilisation, my debt total amount shows as $2219 with a limit of $3200 leaving it at a 68% debt to credit, but my student loan is 103% but is not in repayment yet... and it's not listed anywhere as negative.

Yes i purchased it directly from here... i believe >_<, i actually had it before cancelled it then called back and renewed it.

i have another question to ask, i opened a macys card about 4 months ago, i was unaware that they'd withold my credit limit so i keep it at a 0 balance, would closing this card be any good for my score since it'd increase the account age and not affect my credit utilization since they don't report the credit limit anyway?

so anyway for the 3 negatives here they are; You have too many credit inquiries, Your revolving account utilization is too high, There is insufficient information about mortgage accounts..

i dont think the mortage one falls under my category since i dont have a house yet.... i do agree with the too many inquiries though, i've had 20 of them in the last 2 years, a few from landlords, a couple from employers that are listed on my report but only 8 or so in the last year.

but under the positives it says this;

Your credit score is low enough that you do not have any significant factors that are helping your score. You should read the factors that are hurting your score closely, and make an effort to change any negative behaviors or habits that are hurting your credit score.

i guess 4 years of never missing a payment or being late helps my score at all?

also on the next page it states What's impacting my score? The amount of debt, length of history and amount of new credit are listed as poor.... the length of history i can't really do anything about can i?

So it seems all i can do is pay off all my cards and wait a few years to lengthen my history >_< but i assume my score wont be jumping up 100 points from just that....

[llecs]

Thanks for the reply! Double check the source of your report. You indicated a few things which led me to believe that you might not have a FICO report at all. I bring this up because there are a lot of services out there that try to mimic FICO and FICO scoring. Unfortunately about 99% of the services out there don't even offer FICO scores at all. They offer a knock-off we call a FAKO. I've had FAKO scores as low as 300 points lower than my FICO when pulled the exact same day. In fact right now, a FAKO called a CC-enhanced TransRisk score is currently 320 points lower than my TU FICO when both were viewed on the same day. Now that's an extreme, but certainly unreliable.

However, if your report says the word "FICO" next to the score, then it is a FICO score, from somewhere. The only other place to get your FICO scores are from your lender, a couple of banks and CUs, and a couple of hard-to-find places within Equifax.com (though there are a couple of products on Equifax, like Credit Complete, that don't offer FICO scores at all).

Based on your post, here's a couple of suggestions:

68% for CC util is too high. Pay all down to zero except for one and leave a small balance on the one. Revolving utilization is a big scoring factor. Also, ignore the balance on your Macys. Because they don't report a CL, FICO ignores the balance. It would be a good practice to pay it down though because some have talked to Macys (DSNB) and some have said that they might re-add the CL in the future.

Don't worry about installment util. That's a tiny part of scoring. I bet if you paid it down to $1 tomorrow, you likely wouldn't see a score change (per FICO).

I wouldn't close the Macys. It doesn't hurt in any way. Use it once per year to keep it from being closed and PIF. Again, the balance won't hurt at this point. Even if closed, your average age of accounts will remain unchanged, since all OC accounts, opened or closed, good or bad, are scored.

FICO ignores (and won't show) any inquiry outside of 12 months old. I wouldn't worry about inquiries.

FICO doesn't give a reason code like that for mortgages. I wouldn't worry (unless it was late, shows as a foreclosure, etc.). And since you don't have a mortgage, I guess it isn't problematic anyway. If you copy and paste (minus the account number), someone will give their two cents as to whether or not it reports OK.

FICO will ignore any inquiries from employers.

You can't do much about your length of history. Avoid apping for new credit though...that hurts your score due to new accounts reporting.

Based on your post, I have a feeling that you pulled Equifax's Credit Complete. That's $16.95 and the score used by them is not a FICO. For many, that score is lower too. Lenders don't use it anyway. Equifax also shows inquiries from the past 2 years and FICO doesn't. Also, they express utilization of installment accounts where FICO wouldn't. I've used that service in the past, though. I think it is great for the reports. You can pull a new EQ report daily and they will show more info than your FICO report. I made it a habit to ignore any scores or advice they offered.

[Juan123]

i did not know that about the fako score as you mentioned, i thought since i got it from equifax directly that it'd be a fico score...  i have the equifax complete advantage, that new information actually just threw me for a loop lol. is there a place you'd suggest i get a real fico score from?

If i apply for a credit card and the company pulls a score from equifax would it give them the score i see or a different score from fico? Thanks for the reply and information, you've been a great help and very informative!

i'll do everything you suggest and hopefully after paying off my cards i'll see a nice jump in my score!

edit; i saw that they offer them here (duh on my part) which package would you suggest i get? or should i not bother looking and just do as u said?

[Juan123]

just a little update, i just purchased from MyFico the quarterly watch which sounds perfect for me since changes only occur usually monthly.... TU shows my score at 678 >_< considerably better then EQ!

But i've noticed that most of the places i apply for pull EQ anyway, so i can only hope that all 3 are near each other.

a few discrepancies though that i'll have to dispute over. my TU shows 1 late payment, shows only 3 inquiries in the last 2 years but stil shows as a negative which is weird... and also shows i have 9 cards carrying a balance which i only have 7 cards...

with the TU simulation shows if i pay down 80-90% in 24 months of my cards my score would jump to 754.... i can't wait, but with the christmas season around the corner it's gonna be tough , plus the 24months would jump my score up 60ish points just for the length... wish it didn't take into account history since i can't do much about the age of my accounts.

[llecs]

You can get your EQ FICO from myFICO.com, Equifax.com (www.equifax.com/myfico-products), or from your lender or select banks and CUs as part of a service. If you order from here, FICO® Standard is a one-time pull. You can also opt for Score Watch® for your EQ FICO. This is a service that monitors your EQ FICO and report for certain changes and you get two EQ FICO reports with that, with the first being used when you subscribe. You also get 30% off all future EQ reports. Finally, there's Suze Orman's FICO® Kit Platinum and that's basically a pre-paid plan where you can get 3 FICO reports of your choice each year (e.g. 3 EQ reports, or 3 TU reports, or 2 of one and 1 of the other). In any case, those red flags I mentioned would be visible in those reports. The positive and negative reasons on pages 2 and 3 will be there too.

I thought the score might be from Credit Complete via Equifax. For most, that FAKO score (called an "Equifax Credit Score") is lower for most as compared to FICO, but you certainly can't correlate the two scores. I bet if you pull your EQ FICO, it'll be higher in the 600s.

If a lender pulls your EQ report, and they use a FICO score in the process of determining approval, then there's a good chance the score would match. Mortgage lenders will pull the same EQ FICO as on here. It'll likely match if you pull both on the same day. If a CC-issuer pulls, there's a chance it won't match. Many CC companies will use a CC-enhanced FICO score which isn't for sale to the public, or in some cases they do pull a Classic FICO, but maybe it is a newer or older version. It's a YMMV there. Finally, car lenders often use a auto-enhanced FICO and it's likely the score won't match. However, if you apply at a bank or CU, then there's a good chance the score would match.

I'm a score-junkie...I'd want to know but that's me. I always like to know where I started from.

CC utilization is a big component to FICO scoring. I once brought my CC utilization from 89% to less than 5% over one month and EQ jumped over 100 points. TU increased over 70. The estimate they gave you is spot on.

[Juan123]

my bestbuy credit card offers a credit keeper service but nowhere does it say FICO score. also my discover card offers a similar service but also doesnt say FICO on it >_<

[Juan123]

alright, thanks a lot for the information once again, hopefully the quartlerly will serve its purpose. if not i'll have to buy one of the other services.

[Anonymous]

Juan....I had Credit Keeper but just cancelled it bcuz you can only get your report 1x per month (I'm in a crunch for a mortgage & am watching for each cc payment to hit).  I did sign up for True Credit from Trans Union where you can do a daily pull/update but you cannot trust the score they give you!  I only use that one to see what payments have hit so I can do an actual score pull here on MyFico.  I will be cancelling the True Credit when I get the score I need for the mortgage but it is nice if you need to monitor what's posting.