How depressing!

My2Beauties wrote: I just pulled mine and Brian's credit scores for this credit watch thing I signed up for for th enext 3 months because I want to make sure I tell the mortgage broke everything he needs to know about our credit, I want to be educated on it! LOL! Mine was still low even after paying off all that debt. Granted some of it hasn't caught up yet and fallen off my report, any idea how many points that will bump me up if something shows a $0 balance that was in collections?? This just stinks that after a year and a half of paying stuff off and getting my credit straightened out it's still not up to par, only 12% of Americans have a credit score lower than mine is what the credit watch thing said - that's bad

ETA: On a happier note Brian's is really good and has went up considerably since last year when I last checked it.

luvbug00 replied:

ashtonsmama replied: Bummer...


Hope it all works out!

TheOaf66 replied: I can help you out, in terms of credit, it takes a long time to build it back up and not long at all to knock it down. It depends on what you have on credit right now, clearing up the collection helps but if you have a lot of open credit cards with balances on them that hurts you to a point, if you do not make payments on time that really hurts you. A lot of of depends on your income in comparison to your debt so you have to take all those factors in to consideration. Any specific questions let me know.

C&K*s Mommie replied: to Oaf, also the three major credit reporting bureaus report differently. So you may have higher scores on one of the other three reports. Did you check all three? I cannot recall which of the three Chris told me tends to be higher, It may not be but a significant range to you, but in the eyes of the bank it may be. IDK for certain. A beacon of 619 or lower is considered "bad credit" to many banks.

TheOaf66 replied: I was a loan officer for awhile and if it is less than 620 banks kind of ho hum about it if you have anything above usually 660 or so they are smiling.

Cece00 replied: You should close some of your credit CARD accounts, call the collection companies and ask them to make sure they report correctly to the agencies. Credit cards are not the type of credit that is good for your score, anyway.

Then you probably just need time, and make sure you make ON TIME payments for anything not yet paid off.

The problem with the different agencies reporting different scores is that the bank will pull from 3 major ones & use the LOWEST number for your mortgage rates, etc.

My2Beauties replied: Well like I said I did file a dispute for all 3 agencies for some things that were paid and not showing up as paid yet, some of those I don't believe have fallen off, once they do it should jump up a bit. I only have 2 open credit card accounts with very low balances and one that I closed with an extremely low balance, it's almost paid off actually. Brian's is above 660 so his looks good, mine is below 620 but not by that much I guess. Hopefully they are ok with this and with everything I have showing all debts are paid. Everything I currently owe on (credit cards, car payment, signature loan etc.. are all paid on time every single month, oh student loans too). You know I didn't think about it, my student loans are so high this could be affecting my debt to income and making my score lower! Do loan officers take that into consideration, student loans and high balances on those, I mean if that's the case millions of people have them?? I don't know much about what loan officers will look for so I'm jsut curious Oaf as you said you used to be one.

Cece00 replied:
YES!!

I do loans @ home for a small mortgage company.

The amount you owe every month will definetly effect your debt to income ratio, and could possibly make the amount you can borrow lower.

holley79 replied: I'm that 12%. I have no clue about what paying off will do for your score. I gave up on my CR it's so depressing.

MommyToAshley replied: LeaAnn, don't let this get you down... you have worked hard to improve your credit. You should be proud of yourself. Just keep doing what you are doing...making payments on time and paying off your credit cards. Your credit score WILL improve. I would definitely keep following up on the old debt that should be off your report. That can make a big difference.

luvmykids replied: Bravo for working so hard on your credit, it's not easy and can be very frustrating!

I don't know if this is true or not, just what I was told once:

**Paying off collections doesn't actually help your score. Showing collection balances hurts your score, but zero balances don't improve it because the collection account is still there, kwim? Open collection balances hurt because people don't want to lend to you if you owe other people from years ago, so a zero balance helps in that sense, but basically it doesn't increase your score.

**Credit cards only help your credit if they're at 50% of your limit or lower. The theory that you should max them out and pay them off every month is no good, if they're higher than 50% of your limit they deduct because you're considered a bad manager of your credit.

**Disputes do nothing for your score. When we bought our house our lender told us to not bother, just suck it up and pay everything.

Like I said, I don't know if thats all true or not. But hang in there, you only need about 6-12months of perfect payment history to really send it up.

My3LilMonkeys replied:
If that is the case I can't imagine that only 12% are lower than you....there are lots of people out there with bad credit.

I'm sorry to hear that you're still struggling, but congrats to you for putting in the effort - keep at it, it will pay off!