FICO Score Still Unavailable

[Anonymous]

Earlier this year, I began the journey of rebuilding my credit. I had three accounts in collections. The major issue was that I didn’t have any trace of established credit so my FICO score was unavailable. They said that it could take six months for a score to show up. It’s been nearly six months since I opened a secured credit card, a secured line of credit and a secured loan. Does the six month clock usually start at the time of opening these accounts or once I start paying on them? Also, is it always six months until it shows up?

[Anonymous]

Give us the precise "Date Opened" of the earliest of those three accounts and we should be able to tell you.  Be aware too that just because your FICO scores become available in theory doesn't mean that a CC issuer who gives free scores will give you yours on that first day of availability.  It might not easily be for another two months.

As you describe it, if you were to sign up for $1 trial at Credit Check Total on Sept 2 you would certainly get all three scores.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your response. The date of the first account opened was March 15, 2018 so I am only two weeks shy of hitting the six month mark. 

The reason I am asking is because I am applying for a car lease in the next few weeks and I would like to know what to expect they will discover when they run my credit. Credit Karma has my score at 708 but I know that they aren’t what creditors access when checking credit. Experience says my FICO 8 score unavailable. This is due to not having credit established and that it could take up to six months to register. 

What are are your thoughts? Do you think it’s ok to apply for the car lease now?

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Give us the precise "Date Opened" of the earliest of those three accounts and we should be able to tell you.  Be aware too that just because your FICO scores become available in theory doesn't mean that a CC issuer who gives free scores will give you yours on that first day of availability.  It might not easily be for another two months.

As you describe it, if you were to sign up for $1 trial at Credit Check Total on Sept 2 you would certainly get all three scores.

---

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Give us the precise "Date Opened" of the earliest of those three accounts and we should be able to tell you.  Be aware too that just because your FICO scores become available in theory doesn't mean that a CC issuer who gives free scores will give you yours on that first day of availability.  It might not easily be for another two months.

As you describe it, if you were to sign up for $1 trial at Credit Check Total on Sept 2 you would certainly get all three scores.

---

[Anonymous]

---

@AnonymousThank you for your response. The date of the first account opened was March 15, 2018 so I am only two weeks shy of hitting the six month mark. 

---

---

I think it may be quicker than that.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but since accounts age by a month on the 1st of every month, the OPs above account was 1 month old on April 1st.  This would mean that it's 6 months old on September 1st.  I would think that a CCT $1 trial performed on 9/1 would yield FICO scores, but I'd probably wait until 9/2 just to be safe.

[jamie123]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Thank you for your response. The date of the first account opened was March 15, 2018 so I am only two weeks shy of hitting the six month mark. 

The reason I am asking is because I am applying for a car lease in the next few weeks and I would like to know what to expect they will discover when they run my credit. Credit Karma has my score at 708 but I know that they aren’t what creditors access when checking credit. Experience says my FICO 8 score unavailable. This is due to not having credit established and that it could take up to six months to register. 

What are are your thoughts? Do you think it’s ok to apply for the car lease now?

---

@Anonymous

---

---

I think that your scores will show up in another couple of weeks but I'm not so sure that you would want to apply for a car lease. Lenders will usually want a robust credit history to approve an auto lease.

[Anonymous]

Yup.  I agree with BBS.  That's why I suggested waiting until Sept 2 and getting your three scores via CCT.

I think that you cannot make any rational plans until you see what those scores are.  Well, except for a few things.  When you last looked at your two reports from Karma (EQ and TU)....

How did your revolving balances read?  It's important for the LOC to be $0 and for the CC to be reporting a small positive balance.   (Not every month, but in the 40 days prior to preparing for an important application for credit, like the auto lease.)

How did your loan balance read, and what was the original amount of the loan?

[Anonymous]

Credit card has $250 limit and $0 balance. I pay it off in its entirety before the due date.
The loan was for $259. I pay $43 a month and have one payment left. Somehow I got ahead of myself. The last payment isn’t due until the first of October.

The line of credit has a $250 limit I believe. The balance right now is $21 but I pay it down to $0 by the due date every month as well.

Am I doing it correctly?

[Anonymous]

Making payments by the due date is of course a good idea since it prevents you from having the score destroying event of a "late payment" being reported.

It does not, however, affect the amount that is being reported to the three bureaus.  I'll give you an example with your credit card, but the same applies to your LOC.

The credit card produces a statement once a month.  It covers all your charges for the preceding 30 days.  This statement is (in all probability) not generated on the 1st of the month, but most likely somewhere in the middle.  For example, on roughly the 6th, or the 10th, or the 23rd.  Homework assignment: look at your statements for the last four months and find out when each was generated.  Circle back and tell us.

Let's assume for a second that your statements are generated on the 5th of each month (give or take a day).  That is the Statement Date.  On the top of the statement there will be an Amount Due and a Due Date.  The due date will likely be about 25 days after the Datement Date.  You have 25 days to pay the Amount Due (or at least the Minimum Payment, which is also on the top of the statement.)

On the same day that the statement is printed, the CC issuer will report that Amount Due to the three bureaus.  This is the amount that FICO will use when it determines your score.

Here is why paying by the Amount Due has no bearing on what gets reported to the three bureaus.  Your credit limit is $250.  You could run that card up to $200, then the statement gets printed with the $200 being reported to the bureaus, then your pay that $200 a week later.  You won't be late because you are paying in full before the due date.  But from FICO's perspective, your card will be 80% utilized ($200/$250).

That would hurt your score a lot.  What matters therefore (from a scoring perspective) is controlling the size of your balance BEFORE the statement prints.  For best scoring you would want your CC to be reporting a small positive balance and for your LOC to be reporting a $0 balance.

To circle back to my initial question, based on your TU and EQ reports, what do the reports say your balances were?

As far as your loan, be certain to not make any more payments until late Sept (except as I am about to tell you).  If you have an auto-payment set up, be sure to cancel it.  There will be a strong scoring advantage in having the loan NOT paid off but reporting a small balance.   You want the balance that is reporting to be $22.  That's because you need it to be under 8.99% of the original loan amount.

[Anonymous]

Thank you. I could not access my statements online. It said I’m not currently enrolled in online credit card statements. I’ll look into that. My due date is September 11 tho. Balances are $0 on credit, $21 on line of credit and $86 on loan. That’s what is showing on the current CK. Of course it will be different next month. Thank you for all your help. It’s still a little confusing but what I got is I should have a small amount (under 30%) on credit card, 0 on credit line and don’t pay my last payment on the loan until it’s due in October.

[Anonymous]

That's close, but not quite right.  Action items for you:

Loan:

*  If you had any auto-payments set up, cancel those.

*  Confirm with the lender that the next payment is not due until Oct 1.  Also ask them what the current balance is.

*  Assuming the next payment is not due until Oct 1 (and after all auto payments are cancelled) pay the loan balance down to $22. 

Credit cards and LOC:

* Get access to your statements.  You should have been receiving either paper statements or electronic statements.  Figure out when the statement usually prints.

* Pay the card down to $5.  Keep the balance small while you are preparing for the lease app.

* Pay the LOC to $0 or even a negative number if you think you will owe interest.  You do not want the LOC to report a positive balance while you are preparing for the lease app.