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iubud

iubud

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Aug 7, 2003
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It has been a long time since I ran a credit report. The result of that identified a store credit card we had forgotten about and we closed it. I get email offers to check my credit report so I am naturally hesitant to click on the links. The emails congratulate me on my score and invite me to check it for free.

I would like to see if there is anything bogus out there. If you check yours, do you just go to a website or will a bank or financial advisor run a report for you? I'm not sure my advisor would do that, but seems like something they would encourage me to do. I am a chicken when it comes to sharing financial info on the web even if the site is supposed to be legit.
 
The credit bureaus are obligated to give you one freebie per year. I do it directly with them instead of using some blind solicitation.
 
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iubud said:
It has been a long time since I ran a credit report. The result of that identified a store credit card we had forgotten about and we closed it. I get email offers to check my credit report so I am naturally hesitant to click on the links. The emails congratulate me on my score and invite me to check it for free.

I would like to see if there is anything bogus out there. If you check yours, do you just go to a website or will a bank or financial advisor run a report for you? I'm not sure my advisor would do that, but seems like something they would encourage me to do. I am a chicken when it comes to sharing financial info on the web even if the site is supposed to be legit.
Click to expand...
A lot of credit card companies and banks will tell you your credit score for free. It's not a report but you can at least see your score.

Most people only think about the 3 main credit reporting companies (Esperian, Equifax, and Transunion) but there are at least two more.... Innovis and LexisNexis.

You can get a credit report at Annual Credit Reports .... Like hooky said they are required to give you a free credit report each year (in most states).
 
As NPT said, you can contact annualcreditreport.com and they'll provide links to the three main options for this. I just pulled mine. Takes minutes. If you have the time, it's a good idea to get one of the three every four months, but I'd guess once a year is good for most people.
 
NPT said:
A lot of credit card companies and banks will tell you your credit score for free. It's not a report but you can at least see your score.

Most people only think about the 3 main credit reporting companies (Esperian, Equifax, and Transunion) but there are at least two more.... Innovis and LexisNexis.

You can get a credit report at Annual Credit Reports .... Like hooky said they are required to give you a free credit report each year (in most states).
Click to expand...

Just a note that the score that your bank (or someplace like Mint or Credit Karma) gives you is usually a VantageScore 3.0, which may or may not be reflective of what an actual lender might look at depending on your credit history. Actual lenders will be looking at some variation of your FICO score. VanatageScore 3.0 and FICO differ in how they look at such things such as paid off bad debts. Where VanatageScore might not consider that slow paid Kohl's card to be a negative once you've paid it off, FICO will keep it around for 7 years even after you've paid it. So you could see instances where your bank is reporting to you a 750 credit score (based on vantage) and then one day you go apply for a car loan and you get turned down because...oops, your actual FICO score is 630. Essentially, VantageScore is worthless in real life.

Experian offers you a free look at your FICO 8 score. You can also monitor your credit report and activity there for free. They offer FICO scores and credit reports from the other two agencies for a fee, but unless you have a reason to suspect something simply monitoring one of them is enough.

Check Your Free Credit Report & FICO® Score - Experian

Experian is committed to helping you protect, understand, and improve your credit. Start with your free Experian credit report and FICO® score.
www.experian.com www.experian.com
 
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My TransUnion FICO score is available with one click from my bank website's dashboard. It never changes, so I never concern myself with it. I suppose if it moved I'd need to follow up and see why.

It's funny, since it's as high as you can get yet we are low income, fixed income people. We don't do anything but pay our bills on time and use one credit card exclusively that is paid in full every month. Haven't taken out an actual loan in over twenty years. I don't know how much someone would be willing to lend us, but I'm sure it's a lot more than we could afford.
 
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UncleMark said:
My TransUnion FICO score is available with one click from my bank website's dashboard. It never changes, so I never concern myself with it. I suppose if it moved I'd need to follow up and see why.

It's funny, since it's as high as you can get yet we are low income, fixed income people. We don't do anything but pay our bills on time and use one credit card exclusively that is paid in full every month. Haven't taken out an actual loan in over twenty years. I don't know how much someone would be willing to lend us, but I'm sure it's a lot more than we could afford.
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Credit scores are weird. They actually reward you for having loans and punish you for paying them off. About 5 years ago my wifes FICO was a bit on the edge due to a medical collection. I thought it would be helpful to pay off her car loan, so we dumped $15k and paid it off early, foolishly thinking it'd give her a little bump. Her FICO fell 20 points because it was one less loan in good standing. Lol. So we got her another credit card and her score went up. Seemed ****ed up to me.

Of course, a year or so ago the three credit bureaus stopped reporting paid off medical collections, so she's all good now.
 
Hank Reardon said:
Credit scores are weird. They actually reward you for having loans and punish you for paying them off. About 5 years ago my wifes FICO was a bit on the edge due to a medical collection. I thought it would be helpful to pay off her car loan, so we dumped $15k and paid it off early, foolishly thinking it'd give her a little bump. Her FICO fell 20 points because it was one less loan in good standing. Lol. So we got her another credit card and her score went up. Seemed ****ed up to me.

Of course, a year or so ago the three credit bureaus stopped reporting paid off medical collections, so she's all good now.
Click to expand...

I don't think they measure your creditworthiness so much as they rate you on how much money they can make off you without a bunch of hassle.
 
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I have never checked my credit in my life. All I know is every time I go to buy something on credit it’s higher than it was before. I don’t think it can get much higher to be honest. We pay 99.9% of everything on credit cards to accumulate points. It does seem to have gone up faster since we did that.
 
Hank Reardon said:
Credit scores are weird. They actually reward you for having loans and punish you for paying them off. About 5 years ago my wifes FICO was a bit on the edge due to a medical collection. I thought it would be helpful to pay off her car loan, so we dumped $15k and paid it off early, foolishly thinking it'd give her a little bump. Her FICO fell 20 points because it was one less loan in good standing. Lol. So we got her another credit card and her score went up. Seemed ****ed up to me.

Of course, a year or so ago the three credit bureaus stopped reporting paid off medical collections, so she's all good now.
Click to expand...
UncleMark said:
I don't think they measure your creditworthiness so much as they rate you on how much money they can make off you without a bunch of hassle.
Click to expand...

Think ratios and usage (for example the total of your open max limits vs total outstanding balances of your installment and revolving lines). These can effect credit scores as much as slow pay history, as it speaks as much to one's credit worthiness/discipline.
 
All4You said:
Think ratios and usage (for example the total of your open max limits vs total outstanding balances of your installment and revolving lines). These can effect credit scores as much as slow pay history, as it speaks as much to one's credit worthiness/discipline.
Click to expand...

Regularly carrying a balance on a revolving credit line (i.e. credit card) would be a red flag to me.
 
UncleMark said:
Regularly carrying a balance on a revolving credit line (i.e. credit card) would be a red flag to me.
Click to expand...
Having revolving credit and carrying a balance are two different things. Having a zero balance on $40k available is good for your score.
 
Hank Reardon said:
Having revolving credit and carrying a balance are two different things. Having a zero balance on $40k available is good for your score.
Click to expand...

Maybe that's why my FICO is so high no matter that we're poor white trailer trash.
 
Hank Reardon said:
Credit scores are weird. They actually reward you for having loans and punish you for paying them off. About 5 years ago my wifes FICO was a bit on the edge due to a medical collection. I thought it would be helpful to pay off her car loan, so we dumped $15k and paid it off early, foolishly thinking it'd give her a little bump. Her FICO fell 20 points because it was one less loan in good standing. Lol. So we got her another credit card and her score went up. Seemed ****ed up to me.

Of course, a year or so ago the three credit bureaus stopped reporting paid off medical collections, so she's all good now.
Click to expand...
So true.... my credit score was perfect until I paid off an auto loan and it dropped 25 points when I did that even though I have 3 or 4 credit cards that I used for different things and always pay them off.
 
ce36ei said:
I have never checked my credit in my life. All I know is every time I go to buy something on credit it’s higher than it was before. I don’t think it can get much higher to be honest. We pay 99.9% of everything on credit cards to accumulate points. It does seem to have gone up faster since we did that.
Click to expand...
The reason it's a good idea to check your credit report periodically is to avoid ID theft-cards or accounts open in your name, or simple innocent inaccuracies that could possibly cause issues later. You may also be surprised to find an account or card still open that you're sure you closed years ago.
 
Hank Reardon said:
Credit scores are weird. They actually reward you for having loans and punish you for paying them off. About 5 years ago my wifes FICO was a bit on the edge due to a medical collection. I thought it would be helpful to pay off her car loan, so we dumped $15k and paid it off early, foolishly thinking it'd give her a little bump. Her FICO fell 20 points because it was one less loan in good standing. Lol. So we got her another credit card and her score went up. Seemed ****ed up to me.

Of course, a year or so ago the three credit bureaus stopped reporting paid off medical collections, so she's all good now.
Click to expand...
We cancelled two of my credit cards I used for work. One was a Delta Sky Miles card with an annual fee I used to build up additional miles. After jumping out of the corporate world, I didn't fly and didn't need the card. I cancelled another card I used for travel. Curious what effect that would have on my credit. We have 3 cards, maybe?

My wife wants us to pay off our mortgage early. We have 14 months left. I am trying to talk her out of it as we can keep more of our cash reserves. We won't save that much on interest. We haven't had a car payment for 15 years, nor had any loans.

We do use our bank credit card for points we trade in for restaurant gift cards. We use it on purchases we used to make by checks or debit cards. Because it is the same bank as our checking, we pay the balance off as soon as it is posted. We average a free dinner per month and cheat the bank out of interest charges.

I'm not too concerned about my score. I just want to make sure there aren't any surprises. I don't anticipate applying for any loans in the near future, but it would be good to know I could get the lowest rate if I needed to.
 
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iubud said:
We cancelled two of my credit cards I used for work. One was a Delta Sky Miles card with an annual fee I used to build up additional miles. After jumping out of the corporate world, I didn't fly and didn't need the card. I cancelled another card I used for travel. Curious what effect that would have on my credit. We have 3 cards, maybe?

My wife wants us to pay off our mortgage early. We have 14 months left. I am trying to talk her out of it as we can keep more of our cash reserves. We won't save that much on interest. We haven't had a car payment for 15 years, nor had any loans.

We do use our bank credit card for points we trade in for restaurant gift cards. We use it on purchases we used to make by checks or debit cards. Because it is the same bank as our checking, we pay the balance off as soon as it is posted. We average a free dinner per month and cheat the bank out of interest charges.

I'm not too concerned about my score. I just want to make sure there aren't any surprises. I don't anticipate applying for any loans in the near future, but it would be good to know I could get the lowest rate if I needed to.
Click to expand...
You might look into freezing your credit. We've frozen ours. When the kids were younger, we froze their's too.

If you're going to apply for a loan, you can "unfreeze" it and then lock it down again.
 
A couple years ago I subscribed to all 3 credit agencies. Within 1, 1- 1/2 weeks, I had a very nice bump in my credit scores. I paid nothing off, I canceled nothing, I changed nothing except paying them $20 per month. That is when my previous suspicions were confirmed.
 
iubud said:
It has been a long time since I ran a credit report. The result of that identified a store credit card we had forgotten about and we closed it. I get email offers to check my credit report so I am naturally hesitant to click on the links. The emails congratulate me on my score and invite me to check it for free.

I would like to see if there is anything bogus out there. If you check yours, do you just go to a website or will a bank or financial advisor run a report for you? I'm not sure my advisor would do that, but seems like something they would encourage me to do. I am a chicken when it comes to sharing financial info on the web even if the site is supposed to be legit.
Click to expand...

from ads i see, it looks like the credit agencies also now SELL ways to improve your score.

is that not the very definition of a totally corrupt credit reporting system.

that said, your credit score was once a snapshot of your credit worthiness.

it's now as much a snapshot of how profitable you are to lenders, rather than your worthiness..

your credit score doesn't mean the same thing now as it traditionally has, or was originally intended to.
 
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