@wmarat wrote:
I have been reading this board for about a month, I went through maybe 10000 posts, undoubtedly, I picked some very valueble info, but I concluded that nobody actually understands how FICO works (no offence meant). This software is as unpredictable as N.Korean president.
The problem that we encounter is that we don't know the exact formulas, because they are proprietary. We get together and compare notes, post scores, and do a whole lot of inductive reasoning to attempt to figure out what's in there. There are so many different variables that it's awfully slow going to figure out what's what.
Here's something that might be useful for your friend. It's a collection of those boxed remarks that appear on the second screen of your FICO scores. There's nothing on there that your friend couldn't duplicate, other than length of history, and in fact there is a score bucket for those with very short histories. My three young adult kids started out with scores in the upper 600's or right at 700, as best as we can tell, and is probably where your friend will be after 6 months of established credit.
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=ficoscoring&thread.id=12673
I don't know how this works, but would it be possible for him to establish credit with a US creditor before he arrives, and get a history going? If he could get a card, he could presumably use it for online orders, and so forth. If this were possible, he might get a jumpstart on the process.
@haulingthescoreup wrote:
@wmarat wrote:I have been reading this board for about a month, I went through maybe 10000 posts, undoubtedly, I picked some very valueble info, but I concluded that nobody actually understands how FICO works (no offence meant). This software is as unpredictable as N.Korean president.
The problem that we encounter is that we don't know the exact formulas, because they are proprietary. We get together and compare notes, post scores, and do a whole lot of inductive reasoning to attempt to figure out what's in there. There are so many different variables that it's awfully slow going to figure out what's what.
Here's something that might be useful for your friend. It's a collection of those boxed remarks that appear on the second screen of your FICO scores. There's nothing on there that your friend couldn't duplicate, other than length of history, and in fact there is a score bucket for those with very short histories. My three young adult kids started out with scores in the upper 600's or right at 700, as best as we can tell, and is probably where your friend will be after 6 months of established credit.Thanks to this forum I know general rules, but problem is planning. For instance, how many accounts one needs. MyFICO report indicates that I do not have enough revolving accounts in good standing, but I have 17 and all of them in good standing, or how many inqueries are too many and so forth.
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=ficoscoring&thread.id=12673
I don't know how this works, but would it be possible for him to establish credit with a US creditor before he arrives, and get a history going?As far as I understand it, credit history is tied to SSN and chances to get SSN being outside of the States are slim to none as well as to get TIN. If he could get a card, he could presumably use it for online orders, and so forth. If this were possible, he might get a jumpstart on the process.