Credit Scores

[Anonymous]

My husband's scores just updated today. We are interested in the USDA loan and really need a 640 middle credit score.

EQUIFAX:              585 FICO 5                   644 FICO 8

TRANSUNION:     650 FICO 4                   657 FICO 8

EXPERIAN:           615 FICO 2                   654 FICO 8

He has a furniture bill for $107.93 monthly with a balance of $1685 that was paid off last week and also has a LOC for $5000 $ 200 monthly with a balance of $1500 that he paid off at the very end of July.

Is there any chance that his middle mortgage score could make it to 640 once his credit updates again????

[Anonymous]

Are you saying that he paid off entirely an installment loan for furniture and brought the LOC down to zero? In that case, his scores might actually go down. You want to have a small amount of debt (under 9%) reporting every month.

[Anonymous]

Yes he did. Okay I understand. I will let him know. Will probabaly just purchase something on his credit card to show some utilization.

[Anonymous]

Simply adding utilization on a CC won't do anything. It's not having an open installment loan with a low remaining balance that is going to hurt.

[Anonymous]

The installment loan has only been on his credit for 6 months so I am pretty sure it won't hurt his credit score too much if it's paid off because it's not a long history. He also has a few student loans, a car note and another cc so those should count for something. 

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
Simply adding utilization on a CC won't do anything. It's not having an open installment loan with a low remaining balance that is going to hurt.

---

Ever hear of AZEO?

[Anonymous]

The best way to raise your score is to deal with/pay off any derogatory items on your report.

Joe is correct that paying off current accounts that are in good standing won't do much. Except help your over all dti.

What negitive items are holding his score down?

[Anonymous]

Not sure what that is.

[Anonymous]

Late payments on his car note from 2 years ago before he refinanced this year. He also has late payments from a few years ago from his students loans. So I assume his payment history needs work. That's why he recently got 2 cc to help out his payment history since he has never had any before. I assume he just needs to keep a balance on his cc's so that he is able to make small payments to help out his payment history.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like he is new to credit cards, so time (6months) or more will certainly help. ☺

For the late auto payments, I would write goodwill letters. You can use the search feature in these forums to find out more about them. But essentially you would write the auto loan company a brief, polite, and humble letter asking them if they will extend you goodwill by deleting the lates off of your credit report. They aren't required to but if you explain that you're trying to buy a home, you might get lucky. Having those off your report would give you a nice score boost.

I've read that student loans won't goodwill delete, but it never hurts to try.
☺