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My experian score represents approximately 3.5 percent of my entire financial picture. It is NOT a "Fair Credit...." report. It is an algorithm of a LIMITED amount of data, fed to FICO and is not a full representation of my credit worthiness.
As a result, one can suffer significantly, for years, because of this numerical value, which in no way is true and "FAIR......" .
For twelve years now, I have carefully watched, and guarded my credit rating. I have had numerous auto loans, each and everyone paid on time and never a late payment. I have made all house payments over the years with never a late posting. Needless to say there are a significant number of monthly obligations which have never, ever been late, not even one day.
I own and operate a very successful engineering and construction corporation. Our financial record is impecable. Is that recognized? Of course not. I control millions each year. No sign of that with FICO as being a "reliable and credit worthy individual". Most lenders simply pull your FICO 8 or 2 score and determine your credit worthiness. The more lenders that reject you, the more your score drops. (They all pay for this irroneous and incomplete report). I firmly believe credit cards can be a clear path to financial ruin. Strange, you must have credit cards to become credit worthy. Well, about a year ago, I got a couple. My score immediately dropped?!?! I paid on them for over six months and my score never improved. Experian said I needed a card balance of less than 30%. I made that happen. No improvement. Four months later, I paid off the cards (which cost me more than the original price of the item), my score went down! FICO told me paying off a credit card isn't good. I went out and purchased some items I didn't need (which seems to be the evil motive behind credit cards), so I can become "credit worthy".
No one at FICO or Experian can explain why my score dropped a few points with absolutely no activity, input or inquirys. Only thing that happened to my record was good stuff.
This scoring is a scam and boarders on fradulent activity. I'm considering a new scoring system called the CARA --- "Consumer Acurate Reporting Agency".
If a person is to be labeled, it is only fair that the entire picture be viewed. A five percent picture of a person's overall activity, making a report on that which is so powerfully used to determine credit worthiness and can result in loss of purchases, homes, automobiles, groceries, is simply not complete, accurate, fair, and causes great harm.
Hi! Welcome to the forums. I hear your concerns. I've heard them before. You are right, it isn't "fair".
ABCD will probably be along shortly and help you cope. Ask him how not using credit is leaving money on the table.
First of all, who said that FICO is about your financial strength? That's nowhere in FICO's marketing materials or white papers.
Second, I consulted in your field for 20+ years, I know it well. Many of my millionaire business owner clients have used BK more than once to extract maximum wealth long term. BK is an amazing resource for those smart or lawyered up. You can make billions going bankrupt annually if you do it right, I've heard. So just because you manage a huge company has NO connection to your risk to lenders. In fact, the more huge money a person may control as a third party, the higher risk they might be in certain lending markets! I know a guy who bankrupted multiple huge businesses over his career and he's a powerful figure in politics today, lol.
Third, you have no requirement or responsibility to have any of your information shared with any reporting agency, ever. When you sign up for products from lenders, banks, insurers, etc, the terms and conditions tells you that applying with them or opening an account with them gives them the right to share their experience with you with the bureaus and therefore other competitor companies. If you don't want a credit score, don't use products that share that information.
FICO is a product for banks, not for consumers. It has nothing to do with consumers other than consumers agree to share their performance with the bureaus. This is optional, of course.
FICO is used by banks strictly to aggregate risk profiles based on billions of data points analyzed and distributed amongst the scorecard patents by FICO.
If you control a lot of money, you don't need credit. Two of my best friends have no credit at all -- no reports, no profiles, no history, no scores. One of them controls 10s of millions in real estate but it's all in trust/incorporated and not tied to him at all. He doesn't have a personal debit card even. He banks with prepaid cards from direct deposit dividends from the trusts that own and control his empire. He takes private car services and hasn't owned a car in his entire life -- not sure if he knows how to drive. He doesn't fly by air at all, won't step foot in an airport. But he'll pay $1600 for a driver to take him from New York to Atlanta and back by car. He decided to opt-out of the things that p*ss you off. You can, too.
Rants like this to me feel childish, and I hope I'm not violating TOS here by saying that because it is my opinion.
I didn't know rewards cards existed until February of 2017. I am not wealthy but I might be considered rich because I retired at 41 and my last 3 years of work were consulting for 4 hours on Tuesdays and 4 hours on Thursdays for 20-24 weeks a year for 6 figure income. But my FICO scores in February were 500-550, lol. Once I discovered there are cards that pay 10% cash back on my organic spend, I went to fix my FICO mess and I'm in the 700s today (10 months later) and will be 800s in 2019 (22 months later).
Whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong, because you're making assumptions that are wrong by any measure or vector.
"No one can at Experian or FICO can explain to me anything" -- of course, you're NOT their customer. Do you expect Google to explain to you why you see ads for nursing shirts for new mothers? They won't tell you either, because you're NOT their customer either. You're a volunteer providing data, you're not buying from them, you're giving them free information and not using the outcomes to your best interests.
You can have 850 credit scores if you want, but you don't want them. Instead, you want to play the game based on the rules someone else wrote for you instead of writing your own rules.
FICO is not your financial record. It has nothing to do with your ability to pay for things. It only has to do with the calculated risk of you defaulting based on the data you voluntarily let others share with the bureaus.
Either stop sharing that data, today, or starting playing by YOUR rules.
Hey MusicMan. Folks here will be very happy to help you have FICO 8 scores in the 800s. It's easy to do, costs virtually nothing in time or money. Let us know if you'd like that help.
wrote:My experian score represents approximately 3.5 percent of my entire financial picture. It is NOT a "Fair Credit...." report. It is an algorithm of a LIMITED amount of data, fed to FICO and is not a full representation of my credit worthiness.
As a result, one can suffer significantly, for years, because of this numerical value, which in no way is true and "FAIR......" .
For twelve years now, I have carefully watched, and guarded my credit rating. I have had numerous auto loans, each and everyone paid on time and never a late payment. I have made all house payments over the years with never a late posting. Needless to say there are a significant number of monthly obligations which have never, ever been late, not even one day.
I own and operate a very successful engineering and construction corporation. Our financial record is impecable. Is that recognized? Of course not. I control millions each year. No sign of that with FICO as being a "reliable and credit worthy individual". Most lenders simply pull your FICO 8 or 2 score and determine your credit worthiness. The more lenders that reject you, the more your score drops. (They all pay for this irroneous and incomplete report). I firmly believe credit cards can be a clear path to financial ruin. Strange, you must have credit cards to become credit worthy. Well, about a year ago, I got a couple. My score immediately dropped?!?! I paid on them for over six months and my score never improved. Experian said I needed a card balance of less than 30%. I made that happen. No improvement. Four months later, I paid off the cards (which cost me more than the original price of the item), my score went down! FICO told me paying off a credit card isn't good. I went out and purchased some items I didn't need (which seems to be the evil motive behind credit cards), so I can become "credit worthy".
No one at FICO or Experian can explain why my score dropped a few points with absolutely no activity, input or inquirys. Only thing that happened to my record was good stuff.
This scoring is a scam and boarders on fradulent activity. I'm considering a new scoring system called the CARA --- "Consumer Acurate Reporting Agency".
If a person is to be labeled, it is only fair that the entire picture be viewed. A five percent picture of a person's overall activity, making a report on that which is so powerfully used to determine credit worthiness and can result in loss of purchases, homes, automobiles, groceries, is simply not complete, accurate, fair, and causes great harm.
Seriously? All people like you is complain about things you know nothing about. Instead of ranting which does nobody any good, how about asking and learning?
Credit worthiness, is and should independant of wealth and income. Your income and DTI comes in when you look at how much you can borrow. I make almost 10 times a year what DW does yet our credit scores are similar and you can't get more fair then that.
@Anonymous 2199 wrote:First of all, who said that FICO is about your financial strength? That's nowhere in FICO's marketing materials or white papers.
Second, I consulted in your field for 20+ years, I know it well. Many of my millionaire business owner clients have used BK more than once to extract maximum wealth long term. BK is an amazing resource for those smart or lawyered up. You can make billions going bankrupt annually if you do it right, I've heard. So just because you manage a huge company has NO connection to your risk to lenders. In fact, the more huge money a person may control as a third party, the higher risk they might be in certain lending markets! I know a guy who bankrupted multiple huge businesses over his career and he's a powerful figure in politics today, lol.
FICO is a product for banks, not for consumers. It has nothing to do with consumers other than consumers agree to share their performance with the bureaus. This is optional, of course.
Are you buddies with DT?
wrote:
Are you buddies with DT?
Well, no, lol. But I did meet him because consulted on a job he did where everyone made money hand of fist. I don't vote and am not political -- I lobbied all politicians equally based on their likelihood of listening. I'm a big Ron Paul fan but not for political reasons, if that matters (and since it's for non-political reasons, abides the rules here!).
But I do personally know other "men of industry" (which includes women) who used BK to their benefit. I also know a few wealthy family farmers who used chapter 12 back in the 80s and beyond to a massive benefit because of a crop failure or credit tightening situation so they ended up paying "all of their disposable income" during the lean years to come out just as the crop cycle boomed and the spigots for farm lending blew wide open.
I shouldhave filed BK after my divorce, but I had some moral misgivings which I no longer harbor today. I don't regret NOT filing, but honestly it would have made a lot of sense at that age and time frame when I couldn't afford to turn on electricity because I was trying to pay off debts with the nearly zero income I had for 5 months or so.
wrote:
Anytime the question of fairness comes up I like to remind folks that it is a level playing field. Just because something is not working in ones favor, or the way they think it should work doesn't inherently make in unfair.c
Similar to the analytics used in engineering to measure stresses, its simply a set of parameters, input goes in (credit report) as a result, a solution (credit score). The logarithms used are based on years worth, and millions of people imputing comparative data, it would not work in the banks favor if it were biased.
A very good friend of mine has never once had a job that pays more than $12 an hour -- and no overtime at that. I think she may have ONCE made $30,000 in a year, maybe. Uneducated, unskilled, no personal drive for more. Her FICO scores are in the 800s, and likely always were. She has well over 6 figures in savings and investments and she's in her mid-30s (I think 34 now? Maybe 36?). She's never once been late on ANYTHING in her life, and she's old school and sends a check to her creditors every month and those are never lost or delayed or anything. It's incredible to witness.
Then look at me -- I had years with mid-6 figure income but when the income stopped for 90 days, I went 90D late on everything. So she's making $12 an hour with 800 scores and perfect payment history and perfect utilization, and a guy like me can blow my FICO scores 3X in my life (once my fault, twice my responsibility).
Income has nothing to do with FICOs.
I worked for a guy who was among the wealthiest in my state in terms of income, and American Express literally has a department for people like him that call their "appointed representative" to remind them that the cardholder is again 3 months past due. Since he swipes probably 7 figures a year on Amex, I don't see them ever closing the account, but he's wealthy and has a poor FICO score because he does not give a drop of spit in terms of responsibility. I grew up with a guy who became a rapper (not super famous but well known enough) and he's the same way: has an Amex card, never pays it, has his manager as the appointed representative and they get the same call every few months to pay up or they'll shut the card down. Again, the guy swipes bonkers spend on the card but never opens his mail. I bet FICO scores are horrible if they cared, which they don't.
Endless stories on here and other forums of people who are net worth rich, or income rich, but can't pay a bill to save their lives (or FICO scores) because they just don't care or feel they are too important to be bothered with a 20 second click-pay. I was one of those guys for 15+ years.