How does a closed account with a balance affect your score?

[nmk94]

Thanks guys. So...I guess I should go ahead and get a myFICO product.

Of course, part of rebuilding my credit means getting a better handle on my expenses than in the recent past. So what would be the best bet for my money? I'm not looking to make any major purchases in the short term, but will probably looking for a new house in 2.5 to 3 years.

I don't think I need monthly monitoring. So I'm looking at the One-Time 3 Bureau Report. Get it now, and then every 6 months..eventually getting the monthly when I'm in the one year to 9 months from a home purchase.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

You can get all three credit reports and a FICO 8 Classic score for each by using the $1 trial offer at Credit Check Total.  Many people sign up for that and then cancel it once a month.

There are are also some very nice free tools that supply credit reports.  That would be Credit Karma (EQ and TU as often as once every 7 days) and http://creditscore.com (which will give you your EX report and FICO 8 once every 30 days).

I'd certainly sign up for the free tools and then possibly supplement that with CCT.  Since you sound like you are (wisely) watching your money, those are likely better options for you than myFICO.  Remember that the myFICO product only gets you credit reports every 90 days.

[nmk94]

Thank you! I just signed up for Credit Karma and will look into the other resources.

[Anonymous]

I have yet to see a monthly service that is "worth it" to me that provides more than all of the free sites provide (CK, CS, WH, creditscorecard, etc) when hedged with $1 CCT trials once per month.

[nmk94]

OK, so CCT is definitely showing my utilization exactly how you guys said it would. Brutal. I will have to work on that more than anything else.

Also, will put my scores in my sig, but overall still in the "fair" category amazingly enough. EX 614, EQ 626, TU 612.

[Anonymous]

Glad to know that the high level summary software on CCT describes your revolving utilization as we suggested.  Note, however, that as BBS observed earlier, even if it did not, that's still just a high level "summary" of your report, what he calls "fluff" software.  It cannot be relied on to necessarily describe what is actually going on in the algorithm. 

Example:

Most third party credit monitoring services (myFICO Ultimate, CCT, Karma, etc.) will (in their summary section) round a utilization percentage down if the additional fraction is less than 0.5%.  For example, a total util of 9.35% would be rounded down by the summary software to 9%.  The actual FICO algorithm, however, always rounds UP.  In that case, the algorithm would view that percent as 10% and you'd get a penalty.  (Thus you hear us always urge newcomers to get under 8.99% or 28.99% or 48.99%... etc.)

The scores you get from CCT or myFICO (say) are correct... but the summary of the factors may not be.

[Anonymous]

I do refer to it as "fluff" software quite a bit

I just have a problem with the fluff charts & graphs, as they are obviously intended to "help" or make it easier for people to comprehend what's going on.  But, if the information provided is misleading and doesn't match what the FICO algorithm looks at, it's essentially useless.