newkidontheblock questions

[newkidontheblock]

Newkidontheblock,

My husband and I are in the process of cleaning up our credit but I need some answers.

What does TU98 and TU04 mean?  If I can only get my EX FICO score through a lender, won't that cause an inquiry on my CR?

We subscribe to a bank credit/ID theft program which gives us access 24/7 to everything.  How can I be sure if the 3 CRAs scores  are actually FICO and not FAKO or some other wacky scores?  Should we subscribe to myfico instead?

edited to change thread title after splitting post off from "Middle Score?" --nothing else was changed.

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 03-22-2009 05:11 AM

[haulingthescoreup]

Hi, welcome to the forums!

If you haven't already, please read Understanding Your FICO ® Score and Credit Scoring 101 (at least the first post.)

These will give you the background knowledge you need to understand what you read here on the forums.

TU98 and TU04 are two versions of the TransUnion FICO scoring formula. The numbers are the years that they were introduced. Around half of the nation's lenders have now changed from TU98 to TU04, so myFICO is now working with TransUnion to offer their TU04 scores here. Since they are different scoring formulas, they result in different scores, and lenders might be using one or the other.

As you can tell from the dates on these things, lenders are incredibly slow to change. They get familiar with one product and stick with it, waiting for everyone else to see how a newer version works.

The scores you get through your bank program are FAKO's. If you can post some of the info on them, like their score range, we can take a pretty good guess at which FAKO's they are, not that it matters.

Correct, the only way that you can find out your FICO Experian score is to apply for a mortgage, resulting in a hard pull on all three, which is pretty dang drastic.

For FICO scrores, if you get the Suze kit through myFICO, you'll get 3 pre-paid scores. You can pull EQ once and TU twice, or TU all three times, or whatever. (There are three scores because, of course, you used to be able to get EX as well.)

One combination which might work these days for tracking your FICO's is to subscribe to Score Watch, which follows your Equifax FICO score only, AND the Suze kit, and use it to follow TU only. Scores will display for a year and then go poof, so keep an eye on expiration dates.

If you don't specifically need to track FICO score changes over time, then you might buy one EQ and one TU FICO score here from FICO Standard. But these only display for 30 days, so be sure to save them or print them out. Then you can use your bank's credit monitoring system to track changes on your reports. Scores don't change unless and until the underlying reports change, so that's why it's important to know what's going on with your reports.

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 03-22-2009 05:11 AM