FICO scores can be confusing to say the least. In reality a person has many different FICO (Fair Isaac Company) scores depending on what they are applying for and the codes that are being used to pull the credit report. What about when we pull our own credit report? Are we getting real FICO scores? … Read more
Revolving balances play an important role in your credit score calculation. The total of your revolving debt makes up about 30% of your credit score. Balances on installment loans don’t have any where near the impact on credit scores as revolving balances do. While having a revolving balance or two can help your credit scores, … Read more
Your loan officer has pulled your credit and your scores are just a little short of where they need to be. He thinks there are possibilities for an improvement so he runs a “What If Simulator” to see what could possibly be done to get the scores a little higher. Most of the time, this … Read more
You’ve sold your home, paid off the car and all your credit cards and even closed most of them. You are completely debt free! This is great…right? Well, not when it comes to your credit score. Believe it or not, being completely debt free can actually hurt your credit scores. While it may feel wonderful … Read more
“Synthetic Identity Theft” now makes up 80% of all ID thefts in the country at this time. Never heard of it? A lot of people haven’t. What is it? A thief takes one piece of your true identity (usually a social security number) and then combines it with false information such as a different name, … Read more
You’re going to buy a home and you’ve gone to one of the many resources to pull a copy of your personal credit report, but is it the same as the credit report your lender will see? As far as the content, it probably is; as far as your credit scores, probably not. The scores … Read more
Approximately one-third of the population doesn’t check their credit reports every year. Almost one-fourth have never checked them at all. Not checking your credit report on a periodic basis puts you at a lot of risk. The good news is that checking your credit reports is a very simple thing to do. A government study … Read more
As the result of discussions between a group of state Attorney Generals and the three major credit reporting agencies (Experian, Trans Union, Equifax) the National Consumer Assistance Plan (NCAP) was announced in 2015. The plan is designed to provide more transparency and accuracy in consumer credit reports. The major focus of this change will be … Read more
Christmas is over…the decorations have been taken down and presents have been opened. New accounts have also been opened, credit cards have been maxed out, savings accounts have been drained and probably so has your credit score. And now, here come the bills. Now is the time to look ahead and start doing some damage … Read more
There is always a lot of talk about everything that IS included in credit scores, like how to make them better and what hurts them. But there is a lot of information that is not part of a credit score that some people have always thought were factored in. Here is what is NOT included … Read more