I FINALLY have six months of credit so now I have scores!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I had been off the credit grid for years before I used the Shopping Cart Trick (learned here, THANKS!) in January and got a comenity store card. I’ve been painfully waiting and relying on Vantage 3.0 scores, and whatever score Equifax provides to try and get an idea of what my True FICO Scores would look like on July 1st since I had no baddies.

Transunion Fico 8 - 701 AoOA-6mnths AAoA -4 mnths

Equifax Fico 8 - 707 AoOA-6mnths AAoA -4 mnths

Experian Fico 8 - 734 AoOA- 12yrs 11mnths AAoA - 2 yrs 1mnth

FYI- I already had closed clean trade lines on experian so that’s why it was higher. Up until today Fico couldn’t give me a score for TU and EQ.

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Hey BD303.  One thing puzzles me a little.  In your thread there are exactly two accounts that are mentioned: one very old account (which appears only at Experian) and one recent account (a Comenity opened exactly six months ago).

Your AAoA doesn't quite make sense given that, however.  Your EX AAoA should be a little over half of the age of the old account (a little over six).

You mention using the SCT.  Did you open many cards at month 6, not just the one Comenity? 

[Anonymous]

CGID, thanks for the reply.

Yes, I opened the comenity Ashley Stewart Card on Jan 4th. Shortly after that I got with a mortgage broker because I was looking into buying a house. At this time, since I had only been using Credit Karma, I didn’t know I couldn’t have Ficos for EQ and TU until I let the broker pull my credit. When he pulled it in March, I had a experian mortgage score of 620 and zeroes for the other two.

He told me pay off some collections and opened a secure card. I opened an Open Sky Secure Card for $200 in March. Then April came and I was anxious to see my credit grow so I opened a $200 Capital One Secure Card with a $99 deposit. I found out Kohl’s had a pre-qualify tool and I was approved for a $300 sl so I got it. Around the end of april, I shopping cart tricked for two more Comenity cards that had SL’s of $750 and $500. FYI: my wife got a capital one card too and we added each other as AU’s so her card appears on my reports as well.

So on July 1st, Ashley Stewart turned 6 months old, Open Sky 4 months, Cap One and the other comenity cards turned 3 months old.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Yes, I opened the comenity Ashley Stewart Card on Jan 4th. Shortly after that I got with a mortgage broker because I was looking into buying a house. At this time, since I had only been using Credit Karma, I didn’t know I couldn’t have Ficos for EQ and TU until I let the broker pull my credit. When he pulled it in March, I had a experian mortgage score of 620 and zeroes for the other two.

He told me pay off some collections and opened a secure card....

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In January-March of this year you were planning to buy a house.  Have you changed your mind -- or is that still on?  If you still plan to buy, what is your best guess for a timeline?

If you do plan to buy in the next 13 months, you should stop opening credit cards.  Opening more cards will not help your score in any way (short, medium, or long term) and will actually hurt your score (if the home purchase is in the next 13 months).

The mortgage lender did not give you the best advice regarding your collections.  Much better than paying them off would have been to negotiate a "pay for delete" agreement in which the collection is removed completely from the report.  With the mortgage scoring models, going from unpaid to paid doesn't help you that much, as long as the collection is still on your report.

[Anonymous]

@CGID - Yes, house huntiing is still going on. I'm not going to open anything else as I realize only time will improve my scores. As far the collections advice, you're right, it was probably bad advice to just pay them off.  The only thing is that it wasn't much debt I owed- probably less than $1,000 across all reports. One was medical collection that was removed once I called my insurance carrier and they re-ran it. It was removed 2 days later completely. I had a Tmobile bill that was $110 that was 7 years old and disappeared on it's own in May.  AT&T and Comcast collections both owned by I C Systems. When I paid those off, I C removed them from my reports. So as of today, I only have those cards I mentioned above (all with zero balances as of today but I will start using AZEO) and zero negative items on all bureaus.  My Mortgage Fico scores as of yesterday TU- 689, EQ- 708, and EX- 746.

Do you have an advice for me based on all that?

[Anonymous]

Another thing, I was going through DR Horton for the house and after they saw the score, they entered me into their "Home Buyers Club". The guy they had helping us really only told me to pay off one thing and get one card. It was me who got the other cards stupidly but I also paid off all the debt even though he said I didn't have to. Basically his reasoning was that AT&T would never pay for delete so it wasn't going to do me any good by paying it as the damage had already been done. And since the other small debts were like on one report a piece, he didn't think it would make that big of a difference. He acted like he didn't understand why I couldn't get fico scores without having 6 months history. He was supposed to be the expert! Well that led me to this forum and I've learned a lot.

Honestly I wish I hadn't gotten the Kohls and other 2 comenity cards looking back. A mistake made on my credit journey, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Best advice at this point is to implement AZEO, allow accounts to age, and under no circumstances should you open any other cards.  Do not close any cards either.

You should also use each new card once and allow it to report a positive balance (if you have yet done that).  After that you can do AZEO.  Using the card once is good to prevent it from being closed due to inactivity.  Then you can use the card once every six months or so just to further prevent the issuer from viewing it as inactive.  (Actually once every 11 months is probably fine, unless the card is a Wells Fargo.)

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much. I’ve used them all once since I got them so I’m good there. It’s just that they’re all such small spending limits and it makes it hard to use them and have good uti.

[Anonymous]

Using a card with an ultrasmall limit is not a problem.  Suppose Bob has a card with a $200 limit and he wants to do all of the following:

(1)  Buy some particular thing that costs $130.

(2)  Allow the card to report a positive balance.

(3)  Have that card at a low utilization.

All Bob needs to do is buy the thing he wants, then pay his card down to $5 the next day, then let his autopay handle the $5 the next month.

If the cost of the item is < 49% of the credit limit (e.g. $90 above) he doesn't even have to make the extra payment.  Individual utilization penalties don't begin to get significant until you cross over 49%.

Be sure in your case if you get interested in requesting a CLI (credit limit increase) that you confirm from multiple sources that they will not do a hard pull.  Right now you want the home purchase to drive everything, which means among other things no new accounts and no hard inquiries.

[Anonymous]

Ok that’s awesome info. Will I receive any point increases when I cross any future month thresholds?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

CONGRATS!!!

Great "starting" scores!

I bet you're thinking about getting a new card.   The first thing I did after getting my FICO score was apply for Amex.

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Same exact thing I was going to post. Lol

I had offers on Amex Prequalify page. After my 6 month mark (push it a few weeks to be safe)  I applied for Amex and got in.

Cap1 and Discover seem to be even easier to get into though if you only have a store card and not a real card yet..if you're not even getting snail mail offers yet I wonder if you opted out somewhere or you have mutliple names on your reports.