Credit Card Options

[impala454]

800+ here
http://www.fool.com/investing/small-cap/20...edit-cards.aspx

that's wonderful. continue to read all the websites you want. but when you go to a lender to buy a house or a car, and they say "we will give you a better interest rate if you drop your available credit by X and come back" and I do it, and they do, it tends to sway my opinion of what the right thing to do is credit wise.

so how many houses and cars have you financed?

[dauss]

how much is it to check the score again? start a donation so I can buy it and show it to you?

[Seeker]

you get one free one a year, if you already used your free one it's like 10 or 20 bucks through one of the major credit reporting agencies

[Spectatrix]

The *report* is free, the score is not. Unless you know something I don't?

This post has been edited by Spectatrix: Aug 21 2007, 11:42 AM

[impala454]

experian.com has a free report including the score.

how much is it to check the score again? start a donation so I can buy it and show it to you?

i'm not saying i don't believe you. just curious how many cars & houses you've financed. it'd be hard to believe you if that number was zero.

[impala454]

here's a sample of what the free one on experian gave me:


so it's not too shabby considering some screw ups early in college. it's a little disconcerning to see "total approx debt" say $143k, but that's including my house, truck, school loans, recent medical bills, etc. and the revolving (CCs), the highest interest rate card with a balance is 3%

[Spectatrix]

here's a sample of what the free one on experian gave me:


so it's not too shabby considering some screw ups early in college. it's a little disconcerning to see "total approx debt" say $143k, but that's including my house, truck, school loans, recent medical bills, etc. and the revolving (CCs), the highest interest rate card with a balance is 3%

Only 11 points lower than Impala's score, with significantly lower debt. And I'm younger, thus my accounts are younger, so that's not terribly unexpected.




Check out items 2 and 3 under positives and item 2 under the negatives.

[impala454]

right but the only reason mine isn't 50 pts higher is because my % of debt to available is bad. and you don't improve it by getting more available debt, you improve it by reducing your debt and leaving the available alone. i'm going to be buying a house here in houston at some point, and before i do i'm paying down my CCs and reducing my available credit to around 10k or so max.

and i'll say it again, it's very situational as to how your available credit affects the end rate you get. if you're about to buy a big ticket item (house/car/whatever) and you have 20k of available credit and no previous loans, you simply will not get a good rate. the lender has no way of knowing whether you will run up that 20k right after they give you your $30k for a car, and get yourself into trouble.

if our scores are almost the same, and i have 38% available vs your 95%, that should tell you somethin right there

[dauss]

how is it free? I've already used my experian report this year so far, but I can still get one from the other 2.

[impala454]

dunno just did it and it didnt cost anything.

[GOB]

that's not the FICO score

[Spectatrix]

right but the only reason mine isn't 50 pts higher is because my % of debt to available is bad. and you don't improve it by getting more available debt, you improve it by reducing your debt and leaving the available alone. i'm going to be buying a house here in houston at some point, and before i do i'm paying down my CCs and reducing my available credit to around 10k or so max.

and i'll say it again, it's very situational as to how your available credit affects the end rate you get. if you're about to buy a big ticket item (house/car/whatever) and you have 20k of available credit and no previous loans, you simply will not get a good rate. the lender has no way of knowing whether you will run up that 20k right after they give you your $30k for a car, and get yourself into trouble.

if our scores are almost the same, and i have 38% available vs your 95%, that should tell you somethin right there

I think there's probably a good middle range to hit. Having low available credit is bad as far as your FICO score is concerned, but having extremely high available credit can hurt you when you're hunting for a loan or mortgage, even though it doesn't hurt your score.

I also don't think that carrying a balance on a card helps your score, though having a history of good payment with variety of account types certainly does.

[Spectatrix]

how is it free? I've already used my experian report this year so far, but I can still get one from the other 2.

It's a special offer from Experian. You sign up for a free trial of their credit monitoring service and you can see your report and score for free. You just have to make sure and call them up to cancel before the free trial period is over.

dunno just did it and it didnt cost anything.

Call them before the trial period is over or it'll cost you $12.99/mo.

that's not the FICO score

Hrm, you're right, it's an Experian-exclusive score. Dumb.

[impala454]

it's all the same crap. it's not like your score w/them is gonna be 750 and your FICO will be 500

[Seeker]

I think you do have to pay extra to get your FICO score but it's only like ten dollars more.

If anything this whole thread illustrates how frustrating credit reporting is since no one really knows how FICO calculates your score, and stuff on your credit report is subjectively interpreted by various lenders. To top that off having false information removed from your credit history is painful process. I've never had to go through and I hope I don't, you can read the horror stories online.

The industry needs some kind of open credit rating standard, the rating and scoring algorithm needs to be open source, and all the third-party ratings (experian score etc.) need to go away. Then you need a reliable and fast credit history dispute process to correct false information.