@jg1983 wrote:
Hey everyone. I have an update to my credit situation and a few questions. But first I will say following the advice given here has seemed to pay off. I went ahead and made all the credit card payments laid out in the previous posts. As of right now all the updated balances are showing on all 3 credit reports except the DCU card which was the biggest one I paid. By just doing that my Experian FICO 8 score jumped to 653 and what is really blowing me away is my Experian mortgage score is 699. That is the Experian FICO 2 score which creditchecktotal says is a mortgage score. Not sure how accurate of an indicator that is.
Anyways that is the good news. The bad news is I ran into a couple issues that Experian was quick to correct but the other two are taking longer. That is why I haven't given you the other two FICO scores yet because im waiting for the reports to update before I pull the scores.
The first issue is a collection agency that failed to respond to a debt validation letter and reported anyways. As of right now I have them on at least 8 violations (which I wont bore you with the details of) of the FCRA and FDCPA so I sent them a federal complaint with a letter saying they have 15 days to settle with me or I'm filing in federal court. Tomorrow is the last day they have and I haven't heard from them. Yesterday as a last attempt to show the courts I exhausted every other remedy I filed an online dispute with the 3 credit agencies. I didn't expect it to go anywhere. To my suprise within a couple hours Experian emailed me telling me the collection was removed from my credit report. It said on the same page I should expect the collection agency to report the updated information to the other two agencies. My Experian report shows the collection account gone with a few points boost to the FICO 8 score along with a 100+ point boost to the mortgage score (again how accurate is this score?) and large boosts to credit card and car loan scores.
The second issue I had is my Amazon card ran my payment through my savings instead of checking which resulted in a refused payment for NSF which I cleared up on the phone before the due date. About a week later I found out the Amazon card was closed for that NSF and was showing that way on my credit tanking my FICO 8 along with the 30 days late they added to March. I called them and they reopened the account right away and submitted a request to have the late payment removed. A few days later my Experian report was showing the account open with no late payments.
So now it is a waiting game I guess until Equfax and TU catch up. Is it normal for Experian to update faster than the other two? Once the other two update should I expect similar results for the FICO 8 scores at least? I can pull all 3 scores again for $1 in a few days so I'll know more then. Also I hope the DCU balance update will bump my score a little more because I should go below 30% utilization with that. We plan on taking our tax return and paying most of the remaining balances which should get us under 10%. I will ask again how accurate is that Experian mortgage score. It seems too good to be true but if its even close that might open up other types of loans to me and I might not even need my wife's credit. Does it look like I'm on the right track here? Does it look like a few weeks to a month or so might be a good time frame to wait to try for a mortgage?
Yes the EX FICO 2 score is your EX mortgage score, so you are on the right track.
All Experian FICO enhanced scores (mortgage, auto, bankcard) provided are accurate, so congrats on pulling it up - I think you are certainly on the right track.
You will still need to eventually get your TU & EQ mortgage scores though because the lender will use your middle score for approval- they throw out the highest and lowest of the three. So once you confirm EQ & TU have updated, you may want to consider pulling a 3-Bureau report from MYFICO. It's a bit costly, but it will provide all 28 versions of your FICO - including your mortgage scores for TU & EQ.
And Yes, in my experience, EX updates faster than the others; EQ is a day or two later, TU is the slowest - generally 3-5 days later.
You will still need to eventually get your TU & EQ mortgage scores though because the lender will use your middle score for approval- they throw out the highest and lowest of the three. So once you confirm EQ & TU have updated, you may want to consider pulling a 3-Bureau report from MYFICO. It's a bit costly, but it will provide all 28 versions of your FICO - including your mortgage scores for TU & EQ.
And Yes, in my experience, EX updates faster than the others; EQ is a day or two later, TU is the slowest - generally 3-5 days later.
@jg1983 wrote:
Yes I added my wife as an AU on my DCU card but they haven't updated her reports (or mine with the new balance) yet. I'm not even sure if I will need her on the mortgage if my score is high enough or how high her score would have to be for her to be on the mortgage.
You should both be on the house and on the mortgage.
@jg1983 wrote:
I have an update and some questions for you guys. First of all my balance finally updated on my DCU card a few days ago bringing my FICO 8 scores up to the 680s and my Experian mortgage score to 710. Unfirtunately the account was not added to my wife's credit so I called DCU and was told they don't add the account to the credit report of authorized users because their credit isn't pulled at the time of application so it has been a waste of time waiting for that and perhaps I could have paid the balance down on a different card instead to add my wife to. The good news is the personal loan she consigned with me is now 6 months old so she now has FICO 8 scores in the 660s and Experian mortgage score around 650. The score simulator shows if she adds a revolving account with a $1000 limit her mortgage score should be around 690. Is it better find another card of mine to add her to or should I just have her apply for her own card now that she has a FICO score? My guess is it shouldn't be difficult for her to get a DCU card with a $1000 limit because I was able to with worse scores than she has now. Her score now should be high enough to have her as a co borrower on a mortgage but I want to try to get it higher so we can get better terms.
The simulator is wrong. You should never add new credit when planning to soon apply for a mortgage.
Nor do I see any reason to add her to one of your accounts unless (a) she is getting negative reason codes that her credit history is too short and (b) you have an account to which you can add her which is very old.