School Loans

[Anonymous]

I have several school loans that are currently in deferment. Do the bureaus take currently defered school loans into account when they do your debt ratio? According ot all three of them my installment loan debt ratio is 89%, even though I am only paying on a car and a scooter, which combined is only $240 a month. This must be seriously impactting my score, because I have no derogatory information on my report at all, and my score is below 700 on all three bureaus. I have four revolving accounts with a 2% debt ratio and my oldest acocunt is 15 years old. My total debt ratio is 66%, with 13 open installment accounts, and all but two of them are deferd student loans. Shouldn't my score be much higher than this?

[cdtotten]

FICO doesn't really look at debt ratios. Revolving utilization and installment utilization are both calculated, although installment utilization is worth almost nothing. A debt ratio indicates you are lookingat debt to income (income is not a factor at all in FICO scores). Where did you get your score from?

[Anonymous]

Those scoes were taken from equifax.com, which I have since learned is not in line with true lenders scores. I pulled them today on here and the scores are higher than they were on there. But, there was a big disparity between the EQ score of 707 and the TU score of 760. The only differing information on both of the reports is that TU is not showing a 2004 bankruptcy where as EQ does. It could be that EQ has not updated their scores yet (I had some derogatory information removed recently and the EQ score is exactly what it was about two months ago), or it may be that EQ puts more weight on my deferred school loans than TU does.

[cdtotten]

Installment loans have little affect on your FICO score, very little. That bankruptcy brings a score WAY down, that is a major derog. A major derog on 1 report and not the other explains a huge point difference.

[Anonymous]

Yes, both the TU and the EX reports do not have my bankruptcy listed, but EQ does. It's been over 7 years now, but I understand that a Chapter 7 CAN stay on there for up to 10 years. TU and EX chose not to continue to report it, but apparently EQ chose otherwise. Nothing I can do about that I guess.