Credit Score after 4 months...

[RBisDebtFree]

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to share an update on my credit score. Right after discharge (mid-Nov 2009) my credit scores were 528, 560, 568 now (checked mid-March 2010) they are 600, 659, 664. My wifes went from somewhere 540-580 to 620, 680, 683. It's 4 months after discharge and the case is not closed yet (don't know if that affects credit score though).

We have:
1) Secured credit card $250
2) Unsecured credit card $500 (increased recently from $300)
3) A personal loan secured against our savings $500
4) Auto loan $11500 (originally $13000)

All of those accounts were acquired within about a week after discharge. Don't know if anybody cares to know this info but just thought I would share.

Thanks!

[whipster1]

Not sure what those scores are, because EX doesn't give a fico score. There are millions of "Fako" scores out there, the only real ones are from myfico.com

[RBisDebtFree]

Those are mortgage credit scores acquired by my friend loan officer As far as I know, even myfico.com doesn't sell real EX score.

[mom2three09]

If those are true FICO scores then that's awesome!!! We're almost 5 months post discharge and have also recently gotten a new auto loan ($10K), Secured loan thru CU ($500), CapitalOne CC ($500), and Firestone ($1400). We're waiting for all of them (except for Cap1 which just reported to the CRA's a few days ago) to start reporting and hoping for a nice jump in our scores too!

[RBisDebtFree]

Way to go mom2three! I also think that you'll have a pretty good jump in credit scores!

The only thing that I find hard with rebuilding credit scores is that loans feel like anti-bodies now (credit cards not so much as I only charged $20-30 a month on them). I have this everlasting rush to pay it off but then I stop myself because it's 1) helping my credit score and 2) keeps my savings balance higher. But I still want to be making double or triple payments to get at least one car paid off.

[Amy26]

I pull my credit scores from the credit companies themselves...are those not accurate? I have monitoring directly with equifax, experian and transunion.

I'm mostly annoyed by equifax... I know this bureau is the one most used for things I do and its always my lowest score. Even before my bankruptcy, equifax was always the lowest score I had... and not by a few points..by sometimes a 100 points.

My Transunion score is 691 experian is 650 and equifax is 598.... like I can't figure out why equifax is always so much lower. I have compared all my reports and the only difference is equifax has way more inqueries than the other 2. I'm hoping my equifax score goes up this month because I have at least 10 inqueries that will fall off in the next few weeks.

[RBisDebtFree]

Please update us on how your credit score changes once you have those 10 inquires off your credit report.

I think that Experian cannot sell true and real FICO score to individuals anymore. So I think that you are getting a FAKO score not a FICO score. FAKO scores can be in align with FICO and can be off by 100 points. As far as I know, the only way to get all three *FICO* credit scores is to actually have a report pulled by a business for lending or decision making purpose.

For my wife and I, Equifax credit scores are also the lowest...

[mom2three09]

Way to go mom2three! I also think that you'll have a pretty good jump in credit scores!

The only thing that I find hard with rebuilding credit scores is that loans feel like anti-bodies now (credit cards not so much as I only charged $20-30 a month on them). I have this everlasting rush to pay it off but then I stop myself because it's 1) helping my credit score and 2) keeps my savings balance higher. But I still want to be making double or triple payments to get at least one car paid off.

I know exactly what you mean! We got the secured loan thru our CU before we got the auto loan thru them and I found myself really wanting to pay off the secured loan, but I know having it along with the auto loan will only help get our scores up even faster. The way the loan we have works is that our CU put the loan amount into our savings and then made it unavailable to us, but every month when we pay our $40 payment it immediately free's up that amount from the secured loan amount (and the interest is only 9.9%). So I think we'll keep it for about 6 months and then pay it off. And our car payment is only $250/mo. but we're paying an extra $100/mo. on it to get it paid off sooner.

[ForumReader]

Just read the posts and based on what I have read and heard, Equifax tends to give the lowest score of the three so I wonder why? Does anybody know? As related to this thread, I have pulled my credit reports and Equifax is showing the lowest score of all

[mom2three09]

Just read the posts and based on what I have read and heard, Equifax tends to give the lowest score of the three so I wonder why? Does anybody know? As related to this thread, I have pulled my credit reports and Equifax is showing the lowest score of all

I dunno but before BK EQ was always our lowest score, but now it's TU that is the lowest The only thing I can think of as to why our TU scores are very low is due to the fact that they aren't reporting a $0 balance -- that spot is left blank. I just sent a dispute to them about it, so we'll see if they update to show $0. Is anyone else having this problem with TU?

[RBisDebtFree]

mom2three, try Alaska USA, I think they are an open-membership federal credit union, their rates for loans secured against savings are 2.75%, you can keep such a loan for 2 years at least with about being worried of paying $1 of interest...

[Amy26]

I went ahead and filed a bunch of disputes this evening with my credit reports... some of them I just kinda did to see what would happen... lol.

Equifax:
I had a ton of inqueries on the same day 9/26/09 for auto lenders I've never heard of... I imagine I applied at one site and it sent my app to like 5 places that all pulled my reports.. so I disputed those. And there was even one inquery from 09 that had nothing on it! So, disputed that. 3 of my student loans with chase are reporting as included in bankruptcy and 0 balances... I disputed those because they are not in the bankruptcy and should be reporting as current and stuff. Figured one less negative account might make my score go up...course it will increase my debt too! lol. Other than that, equifax report is pretty clean. Dunno why its so low other than it gets used more often. I had a late payment in 2008 on my home depot account that was paid off and closed long before my BK. So, I figured I'd dispute the late on that and see what happens too... hehe.

Experian:
Wow! Was this one more messed up than I thought! All the account balances were zero but I saw a bunch of my accounts that had "30 days late July 2009" or "60 days late August 2009" and one said "Charge off 2009". These were in the comment sections... so disputed those because those remarks are after my file date. Again my chase student loans were showing up as closed/zero balance and IIB on this report as well. It didn't let me dispute inqueries.

Transunion:
Pretty much everything was ok here too. Was one balance that was blank, put in a dispute for it to be zero. Mostly just put in requests for the chase student loans here. Couldn't dispute inqueries here either. I only have 11 TU inqueries in the last 2 years though... so, not that bad.

Anyways... we'll see what happens!