@Anonymous wrote:Should also be interesting to see what I do next...I'm really at a loss. Do I keep gardening? Stick to my plan to app AMEX for 1 CC to grow to $10k? or Massive app spree to grab as many forever, no AF cards to build a thick file...and some rewards too? SD the CC & go back to just debit card...just incase I try to buy a house?
The clock is ticking before my old line drops...
(I'm open to suggestions for datapoints....would be nice to slowly grow & see how sustainable the new EX score really is).
While I'd certainly be interested in datapoints on a well tracked new clean file, I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't suggest you go abuse EX for whatever goal cards you want now, or at least try to.
You should figure out that house bit, are you talking like now or in a couple years? If a year or more (and maybe down to six months actually), I'd go pick out a couple of cards that covered my rewards spend between Chase and Amex who mostly pull EX and see if they overlooked the file awkwardness but that's me. I'd also go establish a relationship with a quality CU and I'd also consider doing it as a secured card just so you can be pretty much assured of keeping it forever, and with many CU's offering 3% on underlying deposits these days it's not entirely dead capital. I saw the financial downturn and if it goes south again I'm sure I'm going to lose some of my accounts, but as long as I can keep one for oldest tradeline, I'll be happy. Your file is case in point for the power of the oldest tradeline, but FWIW when it came to a decisioning process I'd bet on my dirty file over yours if we got to human UW even with your 850 score heh.
You will probably need an additional few tradelines for mortgage qualification... there are some lenders that will UW on 1 tradeline but many are at 3-4 whereas sans PLOC I think you're at 2. I will state that score will be gone as soon as the PLOC is gone, you'll likely drop back to where the other bureaus are, and I would establish new accounts now and get that all aging immediately.
Only constant in the algorithm is that time passes, and as such take any negatives (like an inquiry / new account) as soon as possible to put yourself in the best shape in the future, and in your case you can shortcut a bit based on the score if the lenders don't look sideways at it (which they might, but it's worth a shot).
Finally if you're disciplined enough to not spend outside your means, stop using the debit card altogether and use the rewards cards and take the extra protection and benefits credit cards give. There's really no reason to ever use a debit card again unless that's all they'll take, and you can always pre-pay the credit cards (or just use a different one with a different statement date) when it comes to getting pretty for a mortgage... do that 2 months ahead of when you plan to go for a mortgage and call it good.
@newhis wrote:My Discover card just updated the TU FICO for me and it is just 6 points higher than 2 months ago (18 from last month)
Still have as red factor "lack of recent installment loan information".
Question: Do you think is possible that the loan reported to EX and not TU?
Credit.com now say I have an open loan, so I guess EX is fine. I can't get EQ information for now. And I can't open a CK account. I will ask for TU report by mail.
Cap 1 creditwise is TU. Think there's some other free TU data services but I forget offhand. Oh Credit Sesame too, guess I haven't logged into there since May which suggests what I think of the service now heh.
Oh meh, TU the bureau is way ahead of MF TU monitoring right now (ahead of EX/EQ monitoring too) it's got all my expected updates where I'm still missing them from the monitoring solutions... I was starting to wonder if Discover actually did to the midcycle update I requested but there it is!