@Anonymous wrote:We are looking to buy a home soon and the mortgage company we will be hoping to use mentioned that my middle score would be used due to mine being lower than my wife's score.
My score is about 8 points lower than what we want it to be for the type of loan we would like. It dropped because my wife took my son to a clinic at the hospital and somehow his bill was associated with my name and it hit my credit a few months ago. I also got a new card with a $4000 limit on it and transferred $2000 to it from another card so that all of my cards were below 50% utilization (at 21% across all cards). About 2 days after my first statement they decreased my limit to $2200 and now the card is nearly maxed. Between those two instances my scores dropped around 40-45 points (fico from CCT). The mortgage company does not use fico so my score through them is about 15 points lower than my fico was.
So now to my original purpose for the post... My dad paid me back $1000 for letting him put some truck repairs on one of my cards and i am wondering what my best option would be... I have a $10,000 card with a $4500 balance and I also have the $2200 card with a $2000 balance, what would help my score the most in a short term situation? Getting the $4500 down to $3500 (currently 0% until Nov.) Or getting the $2200 down to $1200 (0% for another 10 or 11 months)? Or $500 each maybe? Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Brian
So first things first: what do you mean when you say the hospital bill "hit your credit"? Do you mean the hospital offered you a payment plan and it's simply reporting as an "installment loan", or that it's some kind of negative account? And how many cards do you have in total? If it's just the $10k and $2200, I'm puzzled at the "21% across all cards" bit, since $6500/$12200 (or $14000) is either 53% or 47%.
Also, did the bank give any reason why they slashed your limit by almost half once you BT'd $2000 over? I almost wonder if it's linked to your hospital bill issue you mentioned. Because my fear is you're being balance chased by the bank. Normally the simple advice would be to apply all $1000 towards the $2200 card, since that card being maxed out is killing your score. However my concern is if the bank is indeed balance chasing you, there's a chance if you pay down the $2000 to $1000, they'll just lower the limit to $1200 and continue this vicious cycle until you pay off the entire sum, upon which they'll simply close the card.
Is there anyway you can BT that $2000 to the $10k card? That way you don't have to worry about the bank taking any further action, and you can just pay off as much of the balance as you can. Not only will you have brought the card down to zero from maxed out, you'll also have one less card reporting a balance. Depending on how many cards you have in your file, these two combined effects would almost certainly give you the 8 point improvement that you need in the immediate term.
It costs you little but time as BBS suggests, and you'll never get what you want unless you ask for it. Heck odd thought just struck me in light of yesterday's fun, last two gigs I've been offered I've requested and received 10k more than the original offer, I should ask more often for things haha.
While I like the idea of shuffling the money back (I wouldn't have made that BT in the first place, unfortunately I think you found some bad advice about paying individual cards under 50% in my experience anyway with mortgage scores), failing that just pay down the 2000/2200 card, that is a maxxed out tradeline by I think anyone's testing and even on a dirty bird file that was about 7 points EQ FICO 5 if I recall correctly, 14 points if it brought my aggregate utilization over 10% too, 660 -> 646 and repeated that test twice.
@Anonymous wrote:We are looking to buy a home soon and the mortgage company we will be hoping to use mentioned that my middle score would be used due to mine being lower than my wife's score.
My score is about 8 points lower than what we want it to be for the type of loan we would like. It dropped because my wife took my son to a clinic at the hospital and somehow his bill was associated with my name and it hit my credit a few months ago. I also got a new card with a $4000 limit on it and transferred $2000 to it from another card so that all of my cards were below 50% utilization (at 21% across all cards). About 2 days after my first statement they decreased my limit to $2200 and now the card is nearly maxed. Between those two instances my scores dropped around 40-45 points (fico from CCT). The mortgage company does not use fico so my score through them is about 15 points lower than my fico was.
So now to my original purpose for the post... My dad paid me back $1000 for letting him put some truck repairs on one of my cards and i am wondering what my best option would be... I have a $10,000 card with a $4500 balance and I also have the $2200 card with a $2000 balance, what would help my score the most in a short term situation? Getting the $4500 down to $3500 (currently 0% until Nov.) Or getting the $2200 down to $1200 (0% for another 10 or 11 months)? Or $500 each maybe? Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Brian
Getting the 2200 card down to 1200
