New to Board, need Help.

[lanah]

To the other guy,, can you explain your message a little more. I don't know want a GW is or a CLI. Also can you explain the last statement about the lowest interest card.

The credit cards I have are

Travelocity Visa

Orchard Bank Visa

Hsbc master card ( now paid off)

Paypal comsumer credit.

The biggest balance is on Travelocity  Visa. it will take me three months to pay this off.

The two  Non revolving loans I have are the college loan 22500, I pay about 340 a month on that and a personal loan 7010,, ( I original said 5000, I was worng on the balanc) The personal loan is with my credit union and it doesn't show on my credit for some reason. It's not a revolving line, I only pay a hundred a month on that.  I've been told by others to leave these loans alone other than paying the monthly on time. If I can get my credit scor eup to 660 i will then start to replenish my savings for the mortgage. with my new salary I can afford a nice house but my creditscore is putting me at an horrible rates, some banks i don't even qualify for one.

Oh also. i'm off of my mom's cards but like I said I haven't pulled my socre since 5-16-08. i did sign up for score watch for my 603 score so i can monitor it more or less that way.

[mrlimo]

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=Welcome&thread.id=23

First, here is a list of abbreviations commonly used on these forums. You may have an easier time understanding most of the post with this list.

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lanah wrote:

To the other guy

I assume this is me.

can you explain your message a little more. I don't know what a GW is or a CLI.

GW Letter is a Good Will letter, commonly sent by many people to erase lates and such in good will. There are many example letters around the forums. Success rate varies by companies and persistance usually not always pays off.

CLI = Credit Limit Increase. by raising your credit limit, and keeping the same ballance. Will in fact lower your utilization percentage. (example if your ballance is $100, credit limit $100 your at 100% util if you get a CLI of $100. Ballance $100, Credit Limit $200 your util is 50%)

Also can you explain the last statement about the lowest interest card.

It has been said and seems to be tested that if you pay all 4 credit cards off completely to 0% util. It infact can bring your score lower than if you pay off 3 cards to 0% util and keep your 4th card at <1% util. Say you take your $1800.00 card and pay off everything but $18.00 you will still show a ballance of 1% so if you make it $15.00 it is less than 1% ballance. If you have the timing down on reporting to credit agenies and closing dates you can float this ballance every month by paying the $15.00 and then buying another item the next month for $15.00 again that way you dont accure interest on the $15.00 or you can put the <1% on your lowest interest rate card so that if you do pay interest on $15.00 it is example 7% instead of 22%.

The credit cards I have are

Travelocity Visa

Orchard Bank Visa

Hsbc master card ( now paid off)

Paypal comsumer credit.

I am not sure of any of these personally I know citicard does not always do an inquirey on cli's post these 4 cards on the credit card forum and ask if anyone knows if any of these post hard pulls inq's for cli's? If they do it will not help the inq will hurt your score for 1 year. If they do not a cli will lower your UTIL.

The biggest balance is on Travelocity  Visa. it will take me three months to pay this off.

The two 

Non revolving loans I have are the college loan 22500, I pay about 340 a month on that and a personal loan 7010,, ( I original said 5000, I was worng on the balanc) The personal loan is with my credit union and it doesn't show on my credit for some reason. It's not a revolving line, I only pay a hundred a month on that.  I've been told by others to leave these loans alone other than paying the monthly on time.

Correct with these installment loans DO NOT PAY IN FULL, you had said previously you could not even if you wanted (22,000) Installment loans mixed with revolving loans (credit cards) show FICO that you can handle a good mix of credit. Even if you paid them off they would be on your reports for years but ignore these and pay as usual and keep current. You can pay them down with some extra principle payments to save some interest but will do nothing for you fico wise and you could use that $$$ for your downpayment money in 6 months...

 If I can get my credit scor eup to 660 i will then start to replenish my savings for the mortgage. with my new salary I can afford a nice house but my creditscore is putting me at an horrible rates, some banks i don't even qualify for one.

Oh also. i'm off of my mom's cards but like I said I haven't pulled my socre since 5-16-08. i did sign up for score watch for my 603 score so i can monitor it more or less that way.

-57 Fico point and counting till 660

good luck.

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[lanah]

Thanks a lot for your reply.

i understand everything a bit more clearly now.

[mrlimo]

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lanah wrote:

Thanks a lot for your reply.

i understand everything a bit more clearly now.

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I can see clearly now the rain has come....

[haulingthescoreup]

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@lanah wrote:

Thanks a lot for your reply.

i understand everything a bit more clearly now.

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This will last for about two weeks, and then you'll find something new to be confused about!

Seriously though, read Credit Scoring 101, or at any rate the first main post, and check out some of the threads in Frequently Requested Threads. They summarize a lot of things, and they're both stickied at the top of this forum.

[lanah]

Another update. This month (June) I've paid 1086.72 of my 3500 total of credit card balances. That included paying one card to zero and two cards to 40% of balance. I still have on card that's at 100% balance but i will tackle that one next month.

My new scores have increased by 26 points in a month and I pulled the reports and two of the credit cards haven't even reported my first big payments yet. In july I will be paying my next big payments of decreasing all of them down to 0%  I'm hoping to now have a 660 in 3 months time instead of  a year. SO I'm being very aggressive with paying them off.

5/16/08 603 Ex, 611 EQ, 578 TR,  Goal All 660 in 3 months

6/23/08 629 Ex, 628 EQ, 610 TR,  Goal all 660 in 2 months I want to buy a house in August.

ANother question,, Why is transunion reporting such a low score. I've checked and it doesn't have any errors and it only has one card that's report a 278 dollar higher balance than the others? Can 278 dollars make a 17 to 18 point difference?

[haulingthescoreup]

Congrats on the nice score jumps!

It's not so much the actual dollar figure of your balances as whether your util has gone over a certain break point. We take stabs at what these might be, but we're pretty certain about under (not at) 50%, under 30%, and under 10%. There might be one at under 20% and there might be one at under 5% in the high score ranges. Plus there's one for maxed out, and there's lot's of debate as to exactly where that is --85%? 90%? And finally I've read that there's one around 70%.

So at any rate, if that relatively small dollar amount tipped you over one of these break points, it might have put your util on TU into a higher range.

Another possibility is that TU seems more sensitive to the number of accounts with balances, so that if you have too many (in their eyes) cards, loans, and mortgages reporting a balance, you could be losing points there also.

And then finally, all three CRA's have their own persnickety weirdnesses, and it's very easy to get a wide point spread with identical reports, depending on what each one gets huffy about.

[mrlimo]

Nice increase this month...

If you can get that 100% util down under 50% you should hit another substancial increase again.

 How did the Good Will letters work for you? Did you write any this month towards your baddies on your CR's?

My reports are pretty close to being the same across all 3 however my scores vary drastically.

With TransUnion also being my lowest at 795 next Experian at 800 and Equifax at 813 so from high to lowest is a difference of 18 points. I think a lot of the difference in mine is I have 2 inquiries against my TU in the last year where my other 2 only have 1 that drops in July.

[Anonymous]

TU is my lowest score, although not by much. I just pulled it the other day (for the first time) and compared it to the others.

TU was the only Credit Report that had every little thing I ever did posted on it. I guess Nevada favors TU pulls!?!?

Although I think I have read other posters complain about them too....hmmm.

[lanah]

Yeah,, I was so happy to get that email from Score watch that said "you're score has increased [+22], and that was a week after getting one that said it increased [+4]. I thought it would just increase little by little. I didn't know it would jump that much in a month. it feels so good to actually know and see what your score is doing.

it seems like everyone has a lower score with transunion. I won't worry about it now since the banks have told me that I need my middle score to be @ least 660 to get a better interest rate. Paying all of that cash out has been hard but the way I look at it now, I'm paying for all the useless spending I did in college.

Once I get ALL of my credit cards down to 0% should I close the newest one or leave them all open.  I wiwll leave a 1% balance on my oldest card. Somone on here said that has helped others on here.

I did call about getting a contact person to send a GW letter to and the credit person said on the phone that they don't accept them so there's no use of sending it. She was quite rude. She actually said "just be glad you have the car payed off". I may send one anyway, just to see.

Does getting a mortgage hurt your score or helps it. I would hate to do all of this and then get dropped down to 600 hundred again because of a mortgage.