Until about 6 months ago, I certainly would have been considered a horrible pay by my creditors. But a desire to upgrade from my 1999 Subaru Legacy in the next couple of years, along with wanting to purchase a home in the same time frame led me to stop being scared of my credit and get it in order. I had a many delinquent accounts in my past, most of which were settled or charged off entirely as of a few years ago. I had a seriously delinquent account with BOA that went unpaid for about 12 months, ballooning from my $2500 CL up to $4000. I had four other lines of credit, $1700, $500, $400, and $250, most of which were close to being maxed, my utilization had to be close to 90%. Before learning about the ins and outs of credit and FICO scores, I paid down all of my "good" CLs first about 6 months ago and paid off the $4000 delinquent account in full. It really felt great to get all of that behind me.
I had been using TC to monitor my scores and reports. It had my CLs, delinquent and good, on it along with two medical delinquents from 2002 for $200 and $100, both of which were paid off a few years ago. After the big paydowns of my debt occurred, my FAKOs went from the high 500s to a TU and EQ of 661 and a EX of 771. After finding the great resources here I bought my true credit reports here only to be horrified to learn my true scores are TU 570, EQ 574, EX 584. Talk about a bad wake up call into the truths of TC and their "scores".
The good thing is now my credit situation is cleaned up and I keep my utilization number in the single digits. I pay all of my accounts in full, the merits of which can be debated by some. Hopefully with a couple of years of on-time payments, along with low utilization will go a long ways to boosting my score.
Is there any real point of this post? Not really, other than to let people know of the possible huge discrepancies between FICOs and FAKOs.
Message Edited by Bill_In_Dallas on
01-02-2008 07:01 PM
