@MarineVietVet wrote: @Anonymous wrote: Thank you pizzadude for responding to my question....you definitely clarified some things for me.......in your opinion would it be wise or suicidal for me to contact my the particular credit reporting agency and ask them why the collection ageny a/c is still on my credit report?  I just checked out the date of the first deliquency on the CC a/c(collection agency) and it has been well over six yrs, so why is this still on my report?????   Do you think I should pay the suggested amount of $300/350, or pay their reported balance of $750.....in order to avoid the collection agency taking any legal action with me........or how can they now all of a sudden begin sending me these 2 seperate letters requesting $'s .....?   Thanks so much.... A collection can report for up to 7.5 years from the DoFD so they are well within that reporting time limit.   Now if the SOL has expired that just means they can't (legally) file a lawsuit over this unpaid debt. In some jurisdictions, they can file suit and get a default judgement if the debtor doesn't show up in court to invoke SOL, in others it is a violation for the CA to sue when they know the debt is past SOL. So if you get a summons do not ignore it.. As others have said, SOL and appearing on credit reports are totally different legal concepts: one is a matter of State law while the other is Federal law. ... View more

@marty56 wrote: If you have a copy of all 3 reports and they have the same data and you have your TU and EQ scores here, you should be able to come up with a rough score range.  The better your report is in terms of derogs, INQs, and util, the better estimate you can come up with.  I seem to remember that EX does not like high util on cards, but is not as sensitive on # of CCs reporting a balance like TU is.   The major thing is to focus on the content of your CRs, and the scores will take care of themselves,     My recollection from when we could get all three was TU cared more about number of accounts reporting a balance, EQ more about total dollar amount owed, and EX more about percentage of credit limit. My wife and I use very little cash, have high limits in our cards, and pay in full every month, so our EQ scores fluctuated more than the others. Whenever I anticipate applying for credit, I'll start prepaying before statement date for a few months to goose my EQ score. ... View more

@Anonymous wrote: I'd be curious to see what the correlation is to IQ and FICO, as a side note... :)   EDIT: Adding a smiley face, because I'd be really surprised if there were any significant correlation. Well, people who think they can outsmart the sales reps can end up in a world of financial hurt. If it is not clear to you exactly how the other party to any transaction will make money, run away! As Robert Heinlein wrote somewhere, "if you say you want to help me, I am suspicious, if you say you want to help yourself, maybe we can do business." ... View more

@Anonymous wrote: @Anonymous wrote: Just makes me wish i had bought a nice place with a pool rather than what i could afford to easily pay for. Ah well, a sucker born every minute and all that. Next bubble i am getting in on the gravy train I'd rather have the peace of mind than roll the dice on the gravy train. I'm with you: my wife and I could keep paying our mortgage, utilities, and food on either my salary alone or hers. Things would be tight in other areas, but we could keep a roof over our heads and would not go hungry. ... View more

Methinks this may be the next credit bubble to burst. @2NE1 wrote:   Saw this on my gmail account, thought I'd share it:   http://college.monster.com/news/articles/2168-student-loan-debt-clock-reaches-1-trillion?utm_source=nlet&utm_content=_c1_20120515_ ... View more

I suggest you call the offices of your Senator and Representative; they can sometimes be quite helpful in cases like this. ... View more

I have usually seen inquiries abbreviated as INQ, so when I saw the subject line I read IQ as Intelligence Quotient and was therefore bemused... ... View more

@marty56 wrote: @pizzadude wrote: In light of recent developments at Chase bank it will be interesting to see if they scrutinize their risk management approach for consumer credit products ( again ), and I wonder if it will trickle down to other banks as well..... IMHO they need a new scoring algorithm for their executive hriring process. LOL! ... View more

I believe the public policy issue behind the decision not to remove AU accounts was that many AU accounts are stay at home spouses who might have thin files without the AU accounts. This would be less of an issue for two-income couples such as my wife and I: she is an AU for one card on which I am the primary account holder, but each of us has accounts that are not shared. The mortgage is of course in both our names as co-borrowers. ... View more

The standards by which I judge my own actions have not changed much from what the Jesuits taught me in a Catholic school decades ago. However, since then I have known people whose individual circumstances made it extremely difficult to follow those rules. So while my own rules are basically the same, now I am much less prone to condemn others for their choices. I won't claim that I always do the right thing, as Saint Paul wrote, "if we say we have no sin the truth is not in us." I will say that for the most part I have tried to play by the rules. I have been very fortunate because it has been possible for me to get much of what I wanted, and everything I needed, within the rules. If my circumstances were less fortunate, and it seemed impossible for me to get anywhere within the rules, then I might have been tempted to rewrite the rules. For somebody like me who started life with many advantages, judging folks in different situations would seem hypocritical. I have never had to choose between paying a debt and putting food on the table. I have never had to postpone needed medical care for financial reasons. I have never wondered how I could possibly persuade employers to look beyond my past history. Who am I to judge those whose choices were so much more constrained than mine? ... View more

I had to carry a balance at times in the past, am glad that is over. On auto loans, I pretty much avoid that board because I would be tempted to tell people how dumb it is to do things like roll over the balance on an old car loan into a new car loan, which means they drive off the lot already under water. If they get hit by another car, they are gonna owe more than the insurance will pay. For many people a car is a neccessity for getting to work and suchlike. But a new car is never a neccessity. I do wonder how many people replace old cars not becaause a new car is a good idea, but because it's easier to borrow money for a new car than it is to borrow money for repairs on an old car. My 2000 Camry is still in good shape overall, but every year or two needs some sort of major mechanical work done as is typical witb an older car. Lots cheaper per year than a new car, but I have to come up with the cash when needed. New cars are an expensive luxury for those who can afford them, and a financial trap for those who cannot. My wife and I eat out a lot, which we enjoy, but we could stop instantly if we had to. A big car loan is much harder to stop on short notice. ... View more

@Anonymous wrote: @MattH wrote: One of my little tricks is, when it happens that my balance due to a regular creditor is zero, I make a 5 dollar payment to them (usually you cannot pull from the creditor side if there is no balance, but you can always push from the checking account side). This just means I have a credit balance on that card until I use it to buy something. You may wonder, what's the purpose? The purpose is, to make it very simple to check whether I am current with all my creditors. At least twice a month I go to my bank website Bill Pay activity summary, and sort the list of creditors by date of most recent payment. Since I pay SOMETHING on every card every month even when there is no balance due, then I can instantly see if there's an account that I have not yet paid this month. Side question, does that negative balance ever report to CRAs? If so, could have a very interesting effect on Util :) They always report small credit balances as zero.   When cash flow was tighter I sometimes had to wait for a paycheck before paying some of my bills. In such cases, I would send a check for the minimum payment right away, so that if the larger payment arrived a little after the due date I wouldn't get dinged with a late fee. Credit card companies love late fees. I don't. ... View more

It sounds like your friend is in very deep trouble, and there are unlikely to be any simple or quick solutions. Having a relative cosign seems like a rather bad idea to me: I doubt that would do much about the underlying causes, AND could ruin the relative's credit as well. If I were you, I would try to find a local advisor whom you can trust, because this sort of situation needs much more than sage words from folks on this board. Many of us regular posters have some knowledge and maybe even wisdom, but we are not there in person! We don't know the people involved, we don't know the full situation. This is likely to require deep knowledge that can only come from face-to-face conversations. Robert Heinlein wrote "money problems can always be solved by a person who is ot frightened by them," but if I were in your friend's shoes I would be very frightened indeed.   So I think you should look for a local advisor. Talk to folks you trust in your community asking for a referral. Your own lawyer or financial planner if you have one might be able to suggest somebody. Local social service agencies might be able to help but many are swamped with clients at the same time their budgets are getting cut; earlier today I was reading in the NY Times about Legal Aid turning away people needing help with bankruptcy filings. If you and/or your friend are members of a religious community, you might speak with your minister/priest/rabbi/guru/imam/etc. Anyway, seek trusted local help for your friend. ... View more

I notice the article calls the MA rules "onerous." For the debt collection industry I will play my new nanotechnology violin. ... View more

One of my little tricks is, when it happens that my balance due to a regular creditor is zero, I make a 5 dollar payment to them (usually you cannot pull from the creditor side if there is no balance, but you can always push from the checking account side). This just means I have a credit balance on that card until I use it to buy something. You may wonder, what's the purpose? The purpose is, to make it very simple to check whether I am current with all my creditors. At least twice a month I go to my bank website Bill Pay activity summary, and sort the list of creditors by date of most recent payment. Since I pay SOMETHING on every card every month even when there is no balance due, then I can instantly see if there's an account that I have not yet paid this month. ... View more

Way back in the 1970s when I was an undegraduate, I overdrew my checking account with a local bank. The branch manager phoned me and said, for a first time mistake by a student they woul hold the check 48 hours before bouncing it, giving me time to phone my parents and have them wire me some money. Of course, he continued, I had better keep track of my balance in future because if it happened again they would bounce my check. I cannot imagine a branch manager doing that today. ... View more

I believe each of the big three CRAs gives different relative weights to the revolving-credit data. Based on my experience when we could pull all three here, I concluded that for a long-and-clean file like mine, EX emphasized percent utilization more, TU emphasized number of accounts with balances, and EQ emphasized total balance mode. I have thought for a long time instead of statement balance it would make more sense to require every credit card card report HOW MUCH DEBT IF ANY IS CARRIED OVER INTO THE NEXT BILLING PERIOD, as that is what distinguishes convenience users like me from revolvers: I might run up hefty balances during a month in which I spend a lot, but I will pay it in full because I do not currently pay interest on non-mortgage debts. ... View more

Polygraphs -- what are commonly called lie detectors -- are notoriously unreliable, which is why courts will not accept them as evidence. Voice stress analysis would seem even less reliable. ... View more

I saw those advertisements, which did not exactly inspire confidence, they sound like truly lovely people! ... View more

My wife and I use credit cards precisely because they have much better consumer protections than debit cards; we don't much care about the interest rates because the only interest we paid in 2011 was for the mortgage. Aside from the legal difference, there's also a basic difference in mechanisms: with a debit transaction the money instantly leaves the checking account and could make other transactions bounce and so forth. Some years ago my wife was hit by check fraud, which the bank did not detect even though the signature looked nothing like hers, and getting the money back was a major hassle. When somebody has attempted fraud with one of our credit cards, the credit card company's security department has called us to ask us whether a suspicious purchase was legitimate. … I can remember a time when banks actually did look at signatures, when I was a teenager our local branch manager phoned my father's office at the University where he taught: "Professor H, we have a check here that looks fishy, do you recognize the name…" But that was then, this is when we supposedly have a "postindustrial service economy" in which actual service seems increasingly rare. ... View more

@Anonymous wrote: So I guess I should change my pickup line to "I'm single, I've got a decent FICO score and I'm a member of NFCU." LOL! Not that I've much need for a pickup line, I've been married since 1991. ... View more

A few years ago my wife and I financed a new A/C compressor for our residence through Carrier (the manufacturer) because the terms were quite favorable. Only afterwards did I realize that because the financing came from Citifinancial (the "consumer finance" division of Citibank), this was treated as a CFL for FICO scoring. Fortunately, on an otherwise clean history one Consumer Finance Loan is a very minor ding. The mailing address for Citifinancial was different from their prime credit card operations, as my wife and I both noticed. She and I both have individual Citibank credit card accounts that were estabished in the 20th century, so the mailing address for Citibank's prime cards was very familiar to us. Today, she and I both pay our Citi bills electronically so it has been a while since either of us sent any snailmail to Citibank, today I have forgotten their mailing address. ... View more

Interesting article in your link! I would also note, a lender has different reasons for buying a credit score than does a consumer. The lender who buys my score wants to know, what is the risk I don't pay them back. When I buy a score I want to know, how will lenders see me. Suppose both FICO scores and FOOBAR scores have an r-squared of 80%, that is they predict about 80% of the variation in credit risk of consumers. If I am a lender, either score should at least in theory be equally useful to me if they are equally good statistical predictors of outcomes. In practice, most lenders will stick to what they know (some flavor of FICO score) even if some competing model claims to be as good or better. But if I am a consumer, what I really care about is what score will a loan officer see. If FICO and FOOBAR scores both have r-squared for predicting consumer behavior of 80% and are independently developed, then I would expect the r-squared FOR USING FOOBAR SCORE TO ESTIMATE FICO SCORE to be about 64%. The free FICO score estimator on bankrate.com (it computes an estimated score from information you provide) probably has an r-squared for estimating FICO scores much better than 64 percent! So for a consumer, the free Estimator is more useful than any FAKO score, which why I think regulators should crack down on sellers of FAKO scores. ... View more

Be that as it may, the consequence of their SEO makes finding truly independent web sites extremely difficult to find. Even if these are only afffiliates, they do have a financial relationship with Lexington Law. Usually when I research some company online I find much more in the way of apparently-independent information than I managed to find about these people. ... View more

As others have noted, credit scores are trade secrets and therefore it would not be legally possible to standardize them. Many large lenders have their own internal models as well; there is intense competition. A lender who can do a better job of predicting credit risk than its peers can gain competitive advantage, while a lender that does a poor job of underwriting can end up going broke. … What does need to change is the widespread deceptive marketing. The recent reform that requires Risk-Based-Pricing disclosures is an excellent start, but could be improved in several ways. First, along with telling the applicant Your score was XX which puts you in the YY percentile so your interest rate is higher than our prime rate, the lender should be required to specify exactly which model they use. Second, deceptive marketing of FAKO scores has got to stop. Those selling scores to consumers should only be allowed to sell scores that are actually used by lenders. Third, any person who is preparing to apply for a mortgage or an auto loan should be allowed to purchase the exact same tri-merge report and scores as a mortgage lender or car dealer can purchase, so they can come to the broker's office knowing exactly what the loan officer will see. ... View more

I do not know much about Lexington Law, but one thing I did learn when I spent half an hour online reading about them a while back: they appear to be very good at gaming the search engines by creating many websites which appear to be independent but on close reading are basically shills. If somebody goes to a lot of effort to create apparently independent websites, well let's just say that does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling about them. ... View more

If you spend some time reading this site, you will know more than many credi advisors. I also recommend www.bankrate.com as another good site. Almost anything credit repair companies can legally do, you also can do yourself, there are no magical secrets or quick fixes. There are many shady operators in the credit repair business, and even the honest ones will charge you money for doing things you can do yourself with a little knowledge. The crooked ones may take your money for little or no results, and the absolute worst will basically advise you to commit fraud which could land you in big trouble. Save your money, spend a few hours reading posts here and on bankrate.com and also Liz Pulliam Weston's articles on MSN: Liz is one of the more clueful personal-finance writers out there. ... View more

Subject line makes me think of a poem by Edgar A Guest &emdash; and the many parodies therof! ... View more

@Anonymous wrote: Someone explain, either logically or empirically, how two systems purportedly designed to measure the same thing -- a borrower's creditworthiness -- could possibly be uncorrelated. That makes no sense at all. Celsius and Fahrenheit are two different scalings of the same measure: temperature. Does anyone doubt that the two are highly correlated?   But again, if people were to post their two scores, the question of correlation could be answered empirically.   A full answer to your question would get into fairly advanced statistics such as covariance and correlation, but here is a simplified explanation. Suppose FICO scores and Vantage scores each captured about 80 percent of the overall variation of credit risk among individuals. I dunno the actual degree of correlation, what a statistician would call "r-squared," but I doubt it could be higher than 80 percent and it might be a lot lower. Well, if the r-squared for each model is about 80 percent then since they are independent implementations the r-squared FOR PREDICTING ONE SCORE GIVEN THE OTHER would be about 64 percent. Now if you are a lender using Vantage Scores, you don't really care how well Vantage scores predict FICO scores, you only care how well Vantage scores predict credit risk. But if you are a consumer trying to predict how a lender who uses FICO scores will judge you, then your Vantage score is of very little value for that purpose. "A=B" and "B=C" imply that "A=C" because equality is transitive, but APPROXIMATE EQUALITY MAY NOT BE TRANSITIVE. ... View more