Shoestring posted a comment in the renting thread that I'd like some help with. Here's the situation:
I only have an auto loan and 2 credit cards, which I pay in full every month. My credit score is in the low 700s, because, apparently, I don't carry enough revolving credit to be considered a good credit risk. I have six-figure income and high six-figure net worth.
What's the best way to boost your score into the 800+ range without paying absurd interest rates on credit card debt? I would like to avoid carrying a balance on any card. Are there any tricks you can share that will help to boost your credit rating?
What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
Moderator: Global Moderator
What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
Storm, how is your utilization (how much your credit lines on your cards are vs how much you charge on them each month)? If you have (for example) a $5000 credit limit on each card but charge $2500 on each one every month and then pay it in full before the grace period ends you'll still be showing 50% utilization to the credit bureaus. That won't help your score at all. I personally try to keep utilization under 1 or 2% (then again I have more in available credit card limits than yearly income so keeping that low of utilization is easy for me) but in any instance try to keep it under 10% and NEVER exceed 30%.
Also be aware that if one of your two CCs is an AmEx charge card with no preset limit (whether the classic Green card, Zync, Platinum, or Black, or a biz card like Plum or Open) instead of an AmEx credit card (blue, clear, or anything else that has an actual credit limit) then they will report the high balance to the credit bureaus as your credit limit. this doesn't seem so bad until you consider that if you charge, say, $1,000 every month, have a $1,000 balance when your statement period ends, but pay in full before the grace period is up then the credit bureaus will see 99 or 100% utilization every month which will hurt your score.
If you haven't had credit for at least 6-7 years that will hurt your score a bit too and there's little you can do about that but wait it out. My own score is around 760 now (have twelve credit cards and an FHA mortgage but no auto loan...and I always pay any CC balances in full each month) but until I had at least 5 years of history it was always below 740 despite a perfect payment record.
Finally, while the old "authorized user" trick to increase your score (becoming an authorized user on someone's card who has perfect credit and a longer credit history than you do) doesn't work anymore IIRC it can still be done as a "joint user" instead of as an authorized one.
Also be aware that if one of your two CCs is an AmEx charge card with no preset limit (whether the classic Green card, Zync, Platinum, or Black, or a biz card like Plum or Open) instead of an AmEx credit card (blue, clear, or anything else that has an actual credit limit) then they will report the high balance to the credit bureaus as your credit limit. this doesn't seem so bad until you consider that if you charge, say, $1,000 every month, have a $1,000 balance when your statement period ends, but pay in full before the grace period is up then the credit bureaus will see 99 or 100% utilization every month which will hurt your score.
If you haven't had credit for at least 6-7 years that will hurt your score a bit too and there's little you can do about that but wait it out. My own score is around 760 now (have twelve credit cards and an FHA mortgage but no auto loan...and I always pay any CC balances in full each month) but until I had at least 5 years of history it was always below 740 despite a perfect payment record.
Finally, while the old "authorized user" trick to increase your score (becoming an authorized user on someone's card who has perfect credit and a longer credit history than you do) doesn't work anymore IIRC it can still be done as a "joint user" instead of as an authorized one.
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
That is a really good tip. My AmEx is a 10K limit, and the Visa is a 17.5K limit. I typically charge the Amex up to about 50% every month and pay it off in full. The Visa I only charge about 1K or less each month. Perhaps just calling the card issuer and getting my credit limit lifted will help this out. I read another suggestion that said to find out when the credit reporting date is and pay your card in full a few days before that date. The credit reporting date is usually on a different monthly schedule than your payment due date. I'm not sure if this would work for me, though, because I have autopay setup to pay in full every month and it always pays on the exact due date.D1984 wrote: Storm, how is your utilization (how much your credit lines on your cards are vs how much you charge on them each month)? If you have (for example) a $5000 credit limit on each card but charge $2500 on each one every month and then pay it in full before the grace period ends you'll still be showing 50% utilization to the credit bureaus. That won't help your score at all. I personally try to keep utilization under 1 or 2% (then again I have more in available credit card limits than yearly income so keeping that low of utilization is easy for me) but in any instance try to keep it under 10% and NEVER exceed 30%.
Thanks!
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
We were at 800+ at our last refi but it's hard to pin down exactly where that comes from. Of course, the first biggie is just make sure you never have a late payment. After that it gets murkier.
We also had a fair number of credit cards. I (rather irresponsibly) kept around a number of cards that I never used. We kept the limits high and our expenditures relatively low. (Just like D1984 is suggesting.) Just like you, we always pay any balances in full, so I really doubt that this is hurting you.
In addition to that, we had two 0% car notes that we'd been crunching on for a while. This may also be something that they liked. If this helped, it was pure luck. I'd never carry a car note if it weren't 0%.
Good luck!
We also had a fair number of credit cards. I (rather irresponsibly) kept around a number of cards that I never used. We kept the limits high and our expenditures relatively low. (Just like D1984 is suggesting.) Just like you, we always pay any balances in full, so I really doubt that this is hurting you.
In addition to that, we had two 0% car notes that we'd been crunching on for a while. This may also be something that they liked. If this helped, it was pure luck. I'd never carry a car note if it weren't 0%.
Good luck!
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shoestring
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- Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2012 7:45 pm
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
Right.
First let me preface this with full disclosure I am not opposed to the concept of, but that I absolutely loathe the movie rating and credit systems. In both systems anonymous people you don't know sit in the darkness and decide which products are appropriate for people they don't even know using a method that no one understands.
I am not a fan.
That rant aside this is all hearsay because despite the power it has to ruin your day, not a one of us is privy to the actual algorithm.
The two major parts of the score (generally thought to be between 30 and 35 percent each) are paying on time and credit utilization.
Paying on time is generally easy unless you lose a job or something. It's generally unknown exactly how many times you have to miss or be late, but many individuals have reported missing 1 or 2 payments in a year and seeing no adverse score effect.
Utilization is a tricky, tricky one I cannot quite get to the bottom off. Essentially debt carried divided by credit allowed is the percentage. What seems to be known here is that there are ranges. Above 50% utilization = Big Hit on Your Score. That much people seem to agree on.
The controversy comes in when your'e talking about the lower end of that spectrum. I have read sources which say that the best place to be is either at 25 or 33 percent usage. If you have 0% or close to 0% utilitization, you actually supposedly have a worse score than someone with 25 or 33 percent who is carrying a balance month to month! Crazy, but it seems to be true in some cases at least.
I have spoken to two credible people who I have actually met in real life, who arranged and planned to carry 25% of their limit on their cards for a year and swear their scores went up by 25 points. One man I talked to explained to me that the interest charges he paid, even at 7%, were more than made up for by the better rate he got on his mortgage (the logic being 6 or 7% in his case of a couple thousand bucks isn't nearly as much as half of a percent of well over a couple hundred thousand bucks). Provided it's true that this is how it works, I can see how that could be a way to go. The problem is I can't be sure, I don't have exhaustive details of everything else they might have done.
I do know two things that have helped people here, one of which helped me. One is to use your credit card for anything, even if it's piddly, once a month so you have some kind of balance and activity on it. Buy lunch or something. I don't know how this is supposed to help your utilization, but it is is another on time payment. That was hurting me, my score was lower because I was paying cash all the time.
I think this kind of stuff mostly helps people who have had trouble with paying on time in the past, because timeliness and not ever over extending yourself are so basic. The other thing is if you can open another line of credit and transfer some debt to it, your utilization rate can be decreased without making you worse off. The problem here is these moves only tend to help people with relative poor scores, who usually have poor scores because they can't do these basic things for whatever reason.
Anyway it seems if your utilization is zero or at some unknown but relatively low ideal percentage, and you pay on time, and have no black marks, that gets you right aroud the 700 mark usually. 650 at least. It doesn't seem to be that hard to get to 700 even if you've had problems before, if you straighten up and fly right for a few years you can get up there on these criteria alone.
See this is why I hate this system. These basic things are only 2/3 of the score. Good habits and dutiful stewardship are not enough. From this point forward you are gaming the system based on guesses and you hit a point of diminishing returns.
One area where I personally am suboptimal is types of credit, which is about 10% of your score. They want a mixture of revolving (credit cards) and installment (student loans car loans mortgages) loans. I have read several times that the perfect credit score holder would have 3-4 credit cards and 2-3 installment loans going at one time, all paid up on time without using too much of his limit naturally. Apparently less than that hurts you and more than that hurts you. Having way more revolving credit than installment credit hurts you. Not having one of the two types hurts you (this gets me). This of course makes no sense but that's how it is.
In fact this makes me mad because to get the best terms on the installment loan, the best thing you can do is already have the loan! It's like one of those knives that comes in packaging you cannot open without a knife to cut it out with.
Beyond this, the age of your accounts seems to matter. The sweet spot seems to be either 7 or 8 years. The older the account, the more it boosts your score.
Another thing that can effect your score is how often you apply for new credit. The debate rages between you shouldn't have made any new inquiries, and you should make ones you know will be approved.
Now beyond all this we start to get into tinfoil hat territory, I have heard that these things all matter, not necessarily to your FICO itself but to all the scores that can derive from it:
Being married or single
owning or renting
having a checking account
having a savings account
employment information (the same employer for a long time is good)
residency information (living in the same place for a long time is good)
Now there's a lot of others (usually along the lines of religion, ethnicity, sexuality, having an ethnic name, etc.) but I don't think those are accurate at all, mostly because if it was true and anyone ever found out about it, imagine the lawsuits. No company would do that to itself. Seriously I've read some corkers like being black takes 30 points off, being Jewish adds 100, being gay adds points because of whatever reason, working for McDonald's takes points off, it gets pretty stupid.
I have also heard that members of certain occupations like Congressmen, judges and attorneys get special handling to insure their reports are as accurate as possible. No idea, but it sounds like a lie.
I am skeptical of all of these however, some of this I don't see on my credit report anywhere, and there's no indication they are or aren't tracking any of this. If there's two I might believe it's employment and residency information. I am convinced that stable people who have lived in the same place and had the same job forever and a day are favored. I sincerely believe they discriminate, but I believe they're very legal about it.
The problem I run into is that there's not a lot of moves I could make without paying interest to somebody. I think one thing I might be able to do would be to finance a car and pay it off early after making payments on it for a year. I noticed that after I paid off the only auto loan I've ever hand in my life, my score depressed after a couple of years with nothing else changing. So I think it helps that it shows I paid off the loan on time, but I think it hurts that it was years ago.
All this hearsay said, I have met one person in my life who had an 850 credit score. He got offers from Discovercard featuring a 0.2% rate. That is not a typo. He was very proud of this score. Other facts about him:
Same job, house and wife for 27 years running.
Had an active 30 year mortgage he did not prepay on, he had a car payment and had always had a car payment all his adult life, he was paying his son's student loan which was in his name as guarantor, and he had four credit cards from four different brands (Visa MC Discover AMEX) which he carried small balances on except for AMEX. Never missed a payment and never late.
Checking and savings account.
He was quite amused at this score. He wasn't broke but he said he clearly did not need more new debts and everyone wanted him to borrow money anyway.
I have also met one person who had a 350. She:
Took out payday loans and defaulted on them ad nauseum
Often missed payments and bills
Divorced three times
One credit card, always over the limit
Moved at least once a year
No bank accounts
So go figure. I think she had the score she deserved, but to be honest to say that man's financial situation is ideal is utterly silly to me. I think that's the problem, it measures how much you use credit products and how good of a customer you are and how much money they can make off of you, not whether or not you can actually pay the debt.
First let me preface this with full disclosure I am not opposed to the concept of, but that I absolutely loathe the movie rating and credit systems. In both systems anonymous people you don't know sit in the darkness and decide which products are appropriate for people they don't even know using a method that no one understands.
I am not a fan.
That rant aside this is all hearsay because despite the power it has to ruin your day, not a one of us is privy to the actual algorithm.
The two major parts of the score (generally thought to be between 30 and 35 percent each) are paying on time and credit utilization.
Paying on time is generally easy unless you lose a job or something. It's generally unknown exactly how many times you have to miss or be late, but many individuals have reported missing 1 or 2 payments in a year and seeing no adverse score effect.
Utilization is a tricky, tricky one I cannot quite get to the bottom off. Essentially debt carried divided by credit allowed is the percentage. What seems to be known here is that there are ranges. Above 50% utilization = Big Hit on Your Score. That much people seem to agree on.
The controversy comes in when your'e talking about the lower end of that spectrum. I have read sources which say that the best place to be is either at 25 or 33 percent usage. If you have 0% or close to 0% utilitization, you actually supposedly have a worse score than someone with 25 or 33 percent who is carrying a balance month to month! Crazy, but it seems to be true in some cases at least.
I have spoken to two credible people who I have actually met in real life, who arranged and planned to carry 25% of their limit on their cards for a year and swear their scores went up by 25 points. One man I talked to explained to me that the interest charges he paid, even at 7%, were more than made up for by the better rate he got on his mortgage (the logic being 6 or 7% in his case of a couple thousand bucks isn't nearly as much as half of a percent of well over a couple hundred thousand bucks). Provided it's true that this is how it works, I can see how that could be a way to go. The problem is I can't be sure, I don't have exhaustive details of everything else they might have done.
I do know two things that have helped people here, one of which helped me. One is to use your credit card for anything, even if it's piddly, once a month so you have some kind of balance and activity on it. Buy lunch or something. I don't know how this is supposed to help your utilization, but it is is another on time payment. That was hurting me, my score was lower because I was paying cash all the time.
I think this kind of stuff mostly helps people who have had trouble with paying on time in the past, because timeliness and not ever over extending yourself are so basic. The other thing is if you can open another line of credit and transfer some debt to it, your utilization rate can be decreased without making you worse off. The problem here is these moves only tend to help people with relative poor scores, who usually have poor scores because they can't do these basic things for whatever reason.
Anyway it seems if your utilization is zero or at some unknown but relatively low ideal percentage, and you pay on time, and have no black marks, that gets you right aroud the 700 mark usually. 650 at least. It doesn't seem to be that hard to get to 700 even if you've had problems before, if you straighten up and fly right for a few years you can get up there on these criteria alone.
See this is why I hate this system. These basic things are only 2/3 of the score. Good habits and dutiful stewardship are not enough. From this point forward you are gaming the system based on guesses and you hit a point of diminishing returns.
One area where I personally am suboptimal is types of credit, which is about 10% of your score. They want a mixture of revolving (credit cards) and installment (student loans car loans mortgages) loans. I have read several times that the perfect credit score holder would have 3-4 credit cards and 2-3 installment loans going at one time, all paid up on time without using too much of his limit naturally. Apparently less than that hurts you and more than that hurts you. Having way more revolving credit than installment credit hurts you. Not having one of the two types hurts you (this gets me). This of course makes no sense but that's how it is.
In fact this makes me mad because to get the best terms on the installment loan, the best thing you can do is already have the loan! It's like one of those knives that comes in packaging you cannot open without a knife to cut it out with.
Beyond this, the age of your accounts seems to matter. The sweet spot seems to be either 7 or 8 years. The older the account, the more it boosts your score.
Another thing that can effect your score is how often you apply for new credit. The debate rages between you shouldn't have made any new inquiries, and you should make ones you know will be approved.
Now beyond all this we start to get into tinfoil hat territory, I have heard that these things all matter, not necessarily to your FICO itself but to all the scores that can derive from it:
Being married or single
owning or renting
having a checking account
having a savings account
employment information (the same employer for a long time is good)
residency information (living in the same place for a long time is good)
Now there's a lot of others (usually along the lines of religion, ethnicity, sexuality, having an ethnic name, etc.) but I don't think those are accurate at all, mostly because if it was true and anyone ever found out about it, imagine the lawsuits. No company would do that to itself. Seriously I've read some corkers like being black takes 30 points off, being Jewish adds 100, being gay adds points because of whatever reason, working for McDonald's takes points off, it gets pretty stupid.
I have also heard that members of certain occupations like Congressmen, judges and attorneys get special handling to insure their reports are as accurate as possible. No idea, but it sounds like a lie.
I am skeptical of all of these however, some of this I don't see on my credit report anywhere, and there's no indication they are or aren't tracking any of this. If there's two I might believe it's employment and residency information. I am convinced that stable people who have lived in the same place and had the same job forever and a day are favored. I sincerely believe they discriminate, but I believe they're very legal about it.
The problem I run into is that there's not a lot of moves I could make without paying interest to somebody. I think one thing I might be able to do would be to finance a car and pay it off early after making payments on it for a year. I noticed that after I paid off the only auto loan I've ever hand in my life, my score depressed after a couple of years with nothing else changing. So I think it helps that it shows I paid off the loan on time, but I think it hurts that it was years ago.
All this hearsay said, I have met one person in my life who had an 850 credit score. He got offers from Discovercard featuring a 0.2% rate. That is not a typo. He was very proud of this score. Other facts about him:
Same job, house and wife for 27 years running.
Had an active 30 year mortgage he did not prepay on, he had a car payment and had always had a car payment all his adult life, he was paying his son's student loan which was in his name as guarantor, and he had four credit cards from four different brands (Visa MC Discover AMEX) which he carried small balances on except for AMEX. Never missed a payment and never late.
Checking and savings account.
He was quite amused at this score. He wasn't broke but he said he clearly did not need more new debts and everyone wanted him to borrow money anyway.
I have also met one person who had a 350. She:
Took out payday loans and defaulted on them ad nauseum
Often missed payments and bills
Divorced three times
One credit card, always over the limit
Moved at least once a year
No bank accounts
So go figure. I think she had the score she deserved, but to be honest to say that man's financial situation is ideal is utterly silly to me. I think that's the problem, it measures how much you use credit products and how good of a customer you are and how much money they can make off of you, not whether or not you can actually pay the debt.
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
It seems to me that these types of rating systems, in themselves, are not the problem. The problem is the lack of competition. The movie rating and credit rating systems are monopolies/cartels. If there were more competition in the area of credit ratings, I could imagine a more reasonable, common-sense approach becoming dominant.shoestring wrote: First let me preface this with full disclosure I am not opposed to the concept of, but that I absolutely loathe the movie rating and credit systems. In both systems anonymous people you don't know sit in the darkness and decide which products are appropriate for people they don't even know using a method that no one understands.
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
My dad, otherwise with his home paid off and exemplary credit, got held up by Wells Fargo on a $10k auto loan because he at one point had refuse to make his last Sprint payment (awful service at his home) and they knicked his credit score.
I see the firms using it, not the score itself, as the problem. It's relatively clear what the drivers of the score are, and that these drivers maybe represent about 25% of what a lender should look at. A lender should take it into consideration and move on to the other important part of the borrower's "profile," such as their balance sheet and cash flows.
I see the firms using it, not the score itself, as the problem. It's relatively clear what the drivers of the score are, and that these drivers maybe represent about 25% of what a lender should look at. A lender should take it into consideration and move on to the other important part of the borrower's "profile," such as their balance sheet and cash flows.
"Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."
- Thomas Paine
- Thomas Paine
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shoestring
- Full Member
- Posts: 68
- Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2012 7:45 pm
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
I have heard this about Sprint. Seriously that's the third time I've heard a similar story.
I think when it comes to paying on time, the onus is on the creditor to report it, which is probably why people get away with missing one with no ill effect sometimes. That happened to me once, I had to go to a funeral and be occupied for a week (accident involving a car and a train, guess which one he was in?), and didn't mail off a check that I had procrastinated on already. I got all sorts of nasty phone calls, but my score didn't budge.
Oh, and I personally tend to hover around 695 (Equifax hates me) to 710. That's very frustrating because it's technically good, but it's too low to get the really good stuff. It's slowly starting to creep up a little bit though, as I've started to make sure I actually use my credit card.
I think when it comes to paying on time, the onus is on the creditor to report it, which is probably why people get away with missing one with no ill effect sometimes. That happened to me once, I had to go to a funeral and be occupied for a week (accident involving a car and a train, guess which one he was in?), and didn't mail off a check that I had procrastinated on already. I got all sorts of nasty phone calls, but my score didn't budge.
Oh, and I personally tend to hover around 695 (Equifax hates me) to 710. That's very frustrating because it's technically good, but it's too low to get the really good stuff. It's slowly starting to creep up a little bit though, as I've started to make sure I actually use my credit card.
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
Shoestring, thank you for the detailed post. I feel the same way about the system. A few years ago I didn't really care about credit rating, had zero credit cards, paid everything using cash or my debit card, and zero debt. When I wanted to buy a car the dealership told me "you have no bad marks or late payments on your record, but because you have no revolving credit accounts your score has suffered." I think I was high 600s at the time. I found that completely ridiculous - here I was doing everything right - zero debt, never missed a utility payment, and didn't owe anyone in the world a cent, and I was being penalized financially by paying a slightly higher rate by a system that is obviously designed to encourage consumers to take on excessive amounts of debt.
I also found it completely ironic that the people most responsible, like the 850 score guy in your example, are the last people in the world that need credit, and yet they get offers every day. It's almost like some 300 pound overweight guy is walking down the street and everyone is trying to stuff cheeseburgers in his face; meanwhile, a skinny emaciated guy is sitting on a corner with a sign saying "will work for food" and no one will give him a crumb from their plate.
Anyway, the whole system is fucked, we know that, but to be honest, the difference between paying a 3.875% mortgage and a 4.375% mortgage over 30 years is a huge deal, and those of us that plan to buy a house sometime in the next 3-5 years would be wise to game the system and get the best rate possible. I also plan on putting a full 20% down to avoid mortgage insurance and getting a 15 year mortgage.
So, I do appreciate the tips. We can all agree that FICO is an evil fucking cartel, and that every institution that offers unsecured credit is basically no better than a loan shark, except according to law they're no longer allowed to break your kneecaps if you don't pay...
It seems like the way to get ahead is to get at least 3-4 cards and put a very small balance on them, pay off in full every month. I think this might boost my score into the high 700s after I have about 5 years history on them. Thanks again!
I also found it completely ironic that the people most responsible, like the 850 score guy in your example, are the last people in the world that need credit, and yet they get offers every day. It's almost like some 300 pound overweight guy is walking down the street and everyone is trying to stuff cheeseburgers in his face; meanwhile, a skinny emaciated guy is sitting on a corner with a sign saying "will work for food" and no one will give him a crumb from their plate.
Anyway, the whole system is fucked, we know that, but to be honest, the difference between paying a 3.875% mortgage and a 4.375% mortgage over 30 years is a huge deal, and those of us that plan to buy a house sometime in the next 3-5 years would be wise to game the system and get the best rate possible. I also plan on putting a full 20% down to avoid mortgage insurance and getting a 15 year mortgage.
So, I do appreciate the tips. We can all agree that FICO is an evil fucking cartel, and that every institution that offers unsecured credit is basically no better than a loan shark, except according to law they're no longer allowed to break your kneecaps if you don't pay...
It seems like the way to get ahead is to get at least 3-4 cards and put a very small balance on them, pay off in full every month. I think this might boost my score into the high 700s after I have about 5 years history on them. Thanks again!
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Re: What's the best way to get an 800+ credit score?
All I know is that when I showed appoximately 23% utilization on one of my cards (a VISA) my score dropped about 15 points and didn't get to where it was again for four months. I don't think 10% utilization would hurt one's core too much but on the MyFico, FlyerTalk, FatWallet, etc boards the general consensus seems to be that wahetver else you do, pay on time and keep your utilization under 30%.The controversy comes in when your'e talking about the lower end of that spectrum. I have read sources which say that the best place to be is either at 25 or 33 percent usage. If you have 0% or close to 0% utilitization, you actually supposedly have a worse score than someone with 25 or 33 percent who is carrying a balance month to month! Crazy, but it seems to be true in some cases at least.
I have spoken to two credible people who I have actually met in real life, who arranged and planned to carry 25% of their limit on their cards for a year and swear their scores went up by 25 points. One man I talked to explained to me that the interest charges he paid, even at 7%, were more than made up for by the better rate he got on his mortgage (the logic being 6 or 7% in his case of a couple thousand bucks isn't nearly as much as half of a percent of well over a couple hundred thousand bucks). Provided it's true that this is how it works, I can see how that could be a way to go. The problem is I can't be sure, I don't have exhaustive details of everything else they might have done.
How much did the 25 point boost effect the mortgage rate? I was under the opinion (I could be wrong here) that after you hit 720 that FHA and RD 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgage loans all carried the same rate anyhow (and also had PMI if you put less than 20% down). Was he getting an ARM and/or was it a "conventional" (i.e. non-FHA, non-VA, non-RD) mortgage loan?
Not a lie. Check out Leonard Bennett's (consumer protection attorney who is licensed to practice in Virginia and North Carolina; his specialty is FCRA cases) testimony (under oath) before Congress. The actual hearing was in 2007 and has since been removed from the House website but is available at.I have also heard that members of certain occupations like Congressmen, judges and attorneys get special handling to insure their reports are as accurate as possible. No idea, but it sounds like a lie.
http://web.archive.org/web/200803281331 ... 061907.pdf
He mentions that the credit bureaus had things called "VIP files" for politicians, judges, attorneys, celebrities, and of course executives and employees of the credit bureaus themselves. Needless to say these files did get special handling to be sure eveything was accurate.
Reading his entire testimony was eye-opening and pissed me off at how many people's lives the credit bureaus ruined by inaccurate reporting and how their paid lobbyists have all but bribed Congress (and thus affected which judges get appointed and how sympathetic they are to consumers vs CRAs) to allow actions (or lack thereof) that clearly violate the spirit and intent of FCRA but are "technicalities" in the sense of being not specifically illegal (or subject to interpretation as to what a certain part of FCRA really means) so the CRAs/credit bureaus get away with them.
The older the better. WIth that said, a new inquire or two (or even an AOR) shouldn't cut more than a few points off your score if you have immaculate credit and it's more than 5-6 years old...at least this has been my experience.Beyond this, the age of your accounts seems to matter. The sweet spot seems to be either 7 or 8 years. The older the account, the more it boosts your score. Another thing that can effect your score is how often you apply for new credit. The debate rages between you shouldn't have made any new inquiries, and you should make ones you know will be approved.
Was that a "balance transfer at 0.20% for the life of the balance" offer or was it for everyday purchases where he could make purchases, pay it down, make more purchases, and still get the 0.2% rate? Because I got a "0.99% for the life of the balance" offer about a year and a half back. I didn't use it. I don't see how Discover was going to make any money off him at 0.2% if it was the latter above and not a balance transfer. Interchange fees are capped and DFS's financing costs (borrowing money from depositors via Discover Bank) have got to be more than that.He got offers from Discovercard featuring a 0.2% rate
[I read another suggestion that said to find out when the credit reporting date is and pay your card in full a few days before that date. The credit reporting date is usually on a different monthly schedule than your payment due date. I'm not sure if this would work for me, though, because I have autopay setup to pay in full every month and it always pays on the exact due date./quote]
Storm, this is what a Discover CSR told me:
The credit reporting date is usually between the end of the statement period and grace period; often at the end of the month or close to it. If you charge, say, 50% of your credit line and then pay it right before the grace period then you typically will show 50% utilization (BAD!!!). If you pay it in full before the reporting date you might show 0% utilization (like you never even use the card.....not good). What she suggested was to pay all but a few dollars of it right before the reporting date and then pay the rest AFTER the reporting date but a few days BEFORE the grace period was up. Consult you card issuer for the reporting date; some won't give you the exact date (they treat it like it's proprietary or something) but will tell you towards what part of the month it falls (early, middle, late).