Mindblown!

[Anonymous]

I have a pair of Capital One cards and a USAA card. I thought I was doing my due diligence by monitoring the Credit Wise and similar app on the USAA. I used the Credit Wise simulator and it told me if I paid off $1K worth of debt my score would jump 47 points. So I paid the debt off and my score went up 4 points...(We are getting ready to make a vehicle purchase is the reason behind doing this)

I started looking around on the internet and found these forums. For the past 48 hours I have done nothing but read and read and read. But I still have so many questions.

Where do you even start? 

I see all of these people's signatures with this score challenge. Do you pull your scores monthly? Quarterly? 

I keep seeing the term "Garden" pop up. Where do I found out the definition and read more about this?

I see these charts with your EX2,4 6, 8, 9 and your TU1,3,5,7,AU etc etc. Where do I find info to decipher all of these?

What about Joint Credit between spouses? I see great info here about obtaining all different types of credit from CC to Mortgages to Auto, but how does it work or effect the process when it's a joint application?

Anybody willing to help a guy out that just learned he was basically doing the bare minimum as far as credit monitoring?

[marty56]

I'm not sure if the Credit Wise scores are FICO scores or not and simulators are just that so I wouldn't but too much faith in them.  Your best score is when a single card reports 1% utill, all others are paid off.  I subscribe to MyFIco here which gives all 3 FICO scores every 3 months unless something changes on your CR which would cause a score change.  I wouldn't normally pull my credit report unless I was going for a car loan or a mortgage.

There are different flavors of FICO scores like Fico 8 or 9, and auto/mortage scores.  FICO 8 is the one most used now and FICO 9 is the newest which I guess is starting to be used.

The term garden refers to people who agree not to apply for credit cards for awhile or ask for a CLI.

I have made a lot of credit mistakes in the past so I am not perfect or position myself to be  but my take on new credit is that you only apply for credit when you need it.  I also have the somewhat unpopular position here not to close valid credit card accounts unless the have monthly or yearly fees or ask for CLIs.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have a pair of Capital One cards and a USAA card. I thought I was doing my due diligence by monitoring the Credit Wise and similar app on the USAA. I used the Credit Wise simulator and it told me if I paid off $1K worth of debt my score would jump 47 points. So I paid the debt off and my score went up 4 points...(We are getting ready to make a vehicle purchase is the reason behind doing this)

I started looking around on the internet and found these forums. For the past 48 hours I have done nothing but read and read and read. But I still have so many questions.

Where do you even start? 

I see all of these people's signatures with this score challenge. Do you pull your scores monthly? Quarterly? 

I keep seeing the term "Garden" pop up. Where do I found out the definition and read more about this?

I see these charts with your EX2,4 6, 8, 9 and your TU1,3,5,7,AU etc etc. Where do I find info to decipher all of these?

What about Joint Credit between spouses? I see great info here about obtaining all different types of credit from CC to Mortgages to Auto, but how does it work or effect the process when it's a joint application?

Anybody willing to help a guy out that just learned he was basically doing the bare minimum as far as credit monitoring?

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@1. There are different approaches to getting FICO scores. The smart group (like @Anonymous) try to get as much FICO score info as they can for free, or for nominal cost. I'm in the dumb group who actually pays a bunch of money every month. I get the monthly service at MyFICO and subscribe to experian.com and transunion.com. My way guarantees I get to see my FICO 8 from Experian on a daily basis, my other FICO 8's on a 2 or 3-day time lag, and my mortgage, auto, FICO 9's, and other scores on a monthly basis.

2. "Garden" just means to not make any credit applications that would involve a hard pull or a new account. In FICO scoring the age of things is crucial, and the passage of time without new accounts and inquiries 'grows' your score.

3. Forget joint credit. Except for a mortgage.

[Anonymous]

Creditwise gives you your Transunion Vantage 3.0 score, which isn’t very useful. Try creditscorecard.com from Discover, that will give you your Experian FICO 8, which is much more useful. Not sure where you can get a free Transunion FICO 8, I don’t know of one.

Just to clarify, when you say you paid off your credit cards and your score went up 4 points, did you double check to make sure that the new balances on your credit cards have reported to the credit bureau? Also, do you have negatives on your credit report that could be holding your score down?

[Anonymous]

I have a Chapter 7 in May '11

Capital One Visa has a 30 day late over 24 months ago.

Capital One Mastercard has a 60 day late over 24 months ago. 

I have a credit union loan that was paid off over 2 years ago that shows a 30 day late in 2014....

I did check today and the new balances have been reported. Credit Wise had me listed as a 604 and after paying it went to 609. As of today I found my actual scores as EQ 628/TU 627/EX 650.

[Anonymous]

SouthJ (as usual) made me laugh with his self-effacing distinction between Smart and Dumb groups.  What he says later is the real deal: just depends on what makes you happy.  SouthJ belongs to a cool group of people who do research into the theory of credit scoring.  Having all those fancy toys in his closet lets him pull certain scores every single day.  Like a chemist with a (comparatively) expensive lab.  Certainly we all benefit from SouthJ's research.  I think Thomas Thumb and some of the other scoring theorists have a lot of similar toys that cost more than the free tools that are out there.

If our OP gets interested in hearing how to approach getting his scores and reports and pay almost nothing for them annually, let us know and I am sure somebody will be able to explain some options.