Which Credit Monitoring Service Should I Use?

[Anonymous]

I'm looking to apply for a mortgage this year. I have one PAID medical collection reporting which I'm in the process of removing [WhyChat]. There was one unpaid medical bill I recently stopped collection [using WhyChat] before it reappeared. I'm also in the process of applying for a IRS payment plan for 9k back taxes. My FICO8 score is 703. FICO2 score is 677. CK [FWIW] is 769/766.

I'm looking for a service that will provide daily alerts so I can monitor if either of these medical accounts reappear on my CR. I'm currently using Eliminate ID Theft. Is there another service I should use? I'm not so concerned with my score at the moment but are the credit scores [743/703/706] they provide a FICO score?  TIA

[Anonymous]

Moderator Gdale6 describes his experience with EIT here (post #2) and indicates that their scores are not FICO scores:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/General-Credit-Topics/Eliminate-ID-Theft-Monitoring-Setup/td-p/42909...

That was 18 months ago, and it is possible for that sort of thing to change.  You might want to reach out by PM and ask if Gdale6 has any further thoughts,

Are you certain you need a tool that gives you daily monitoring of your reports?  Would weekly be sufficient?  If so you can pull your EQ and TU reports once a week with Credit Karma for free.  You can get your EX report once a month for free too.

Kudos for placing your credit scores at a far lower level of importance right now than your reports.  You are correctly seeing that you have a ton of stuff going on in your reports, with one hopes many things changing for the better.  That's why pulling your mortgage scores would not tell you much.  Better to wait until you get your reports into better shape.

PS.  Do you have a rough guess as to when you might buy a house?  June would be a lot different from December.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, for the suggestion. I'll reach out to him. I may drop them since I believe Wallet Hub provides the same info [N/C]. I have 3 CC accounts with small balances that will be paid off by summer that will increase my score, and hopefully getting this paid collection removed. I haven't met with a mortgage broker yet, waiting to get things cleared up / bump up my score, but depending on what they tell me it's looking more like the end of the year or early next.  

[Anonymous]

Bear in mind that a mortgage broker will often want to pull your mortgage scores as a first step of beginning to help you.  He'll be very well intentioned in doing that, but it will cause you to get a hard inquiry on each of your three reports.  That in turn will lower your score when it comes time to do the actual house hunting (e.g. four months later).

My own suggestion would be work first on getting your reports cleaned up.  That may take at least a few months.  Then, when you get them as perfect as you think they are going to be, pull your mortgage scores here at myFICO.  That will avoid the hard inquiry.  You can take a computer prinout of the three mortgage scores to any mortgage lender you want to talk with, for your preliminary conversations.

When you finally get ready to do a pre-approval, then you can let them pull your scores.

About 40 days before you pull your mortgage scores at myFICO, you should pay all your cards to $0 except one, with the remaining card showing a small positive balance, like $10 say.  The mortgage models really like that.

In the meantime do sign up for all the free tools you can to monitor your reports.  Karma (TU and EQ weekly) and WalletHub (TU daily) and freeCreditScore.com (EX monthly) are good options.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for that advice. I was aware of some of it but not all. I previously read you should get all cards down to zero balance and one card below 28% [obviously 9% would be preferred]. I can do that by fall. I think I'm going to cancel the EIDT and sign up for the $5 Experian 7 day trial and then see how much they'll discount when I cancel. 

One other wrinkle. I've been employed at my current job for 2.7 years but actively searching a higher paying position with another company. I know the morttgage lenders want you to be employed for 2+ years. Is this a deal breaker if I accept a new position? My primary incentive for the change is to pay off the IRS debt as quickly as possible as I would rather not dip into my IRA and ATST improve my DTI.  

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thank you for that advice. I was aware of some of it but not all. I previously read you should get all cards down to zero balance and one card below 28% [obviously 9% would be preferred]. I can do that by fall. I think I'm going to cancel the EIDT and sign up for the $5 Experian 7 day trial and then see how much they'll discount when I cancel. 

One other wrinkle. I've been employed at my current job for 2.7 years but actively searching a higher paying position with another company. I know the morttgage lenders want you to be employed for 2+ years. Is this a deal breaker if I accept a new position? My primary incentive for the change is to pay off the IRS debt as quickly as possible as I would rather not dip into my IRA and ATST improve my DTI.  

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I'd post this question in the mortgage sub-forum.  Lots of mortgage brokers visit it. 

My own personal take is that your career should trump house buying (though likely there is no need to choose anyway, but ask the mortgage experts here).  Buying a house is not the Holy Grail it's cracked up to be.  Having a job that pays well and which you like is IMO far more important. 

[Anonymous]

I agree with the above. I think I'm honestly a lot happier now living in a rented apartment for which all maintenance is included in the rent and having a job I like that pays $50K a year than I was five years ago living in a mortgaged condo which was having serious issues that I couldn't afford to fix and having a $30K job that I hadn't worked full-time on in a couple of years because of lack of contracts, and that I had long since come to hate anyway but felt stuck in.