Saturday, March 20, 2010

Things That Make Me Laugh

I pulled my credit reports and scores this week to do my annual check. My FICO score is about the same as it was last year, not great at 635, but at least it has not gone down. I had hoped it would go up a bit more, like at least to 650. My Advantage score is 785, what ever that means and supposedly am a Prime candidate, what ever that means. I'm getting ready to process an application for an FHA loan to get some money for some much needed work on my house. I thought this would be a good time to double check my file before it gets pulled by a lender so I can clean up any discrepancies.

I did have to laugh at a couple items that were listed on the report as an "explanation" for my low scores.

Your report shows one or more bankruptcy filings. Bankruptcies can remain on file for up to 10 years, depending on the chapter filed, and have a negative impact on your credit score. Ah Duh, I filed Bankruptcy, I expect to find this on the report!


• The average loan amount across open, recently reported real estate accounts, such as a mortgage, is too low. Having low loan amounts has a negative impact on your credit score. Too Low? I mean my mortgage was small to begin with, I did not buy a McMansion!

I did find one discrepancy, which was an account I had in collections was discharged in the BK filing. It is still listed as active in two of the three credit agencies and not on the third. I'm filing a paper dispute as I hear they work better than an electronic one. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I thought, hey, it's only two stamps. I even cleaned up some personal information, employers names spelled wrong, corrected some start dates, eliminated some old duplicate mailing addresses.

I've said this before. Even with the Bankruptcy, it's better to have correct negative information than incorrect negative information on the account.

When was the last time you looked at your credit reports?

6 comments:

Revanche said...

Not too long ago, but I've had so many CC accounts opened and closed on account of bonuses and such that I couldn't really be sure if there was incorrect card account information on my report. The one obviously wrong one that I saw years ago wasn't ever corrected but it wasn't anything particularly adverse.

Anonymous said...

My credit report also lists a few accounts that were discharged in bankruptcy as "open." Is this something I should try to fix? I had thought that maybe these older accounts were increasing the score, but maybe they are also doing something negative (I'm not seeking financing for anything, so its more an academic exercise for me, but in the future I might need to get something financed).

Bouncing Back said...

Anonymous-yes, get those accounts cleared up! If the account was Discharged in BK, it should be noted. It may look like you were "hiding" an account from the BK and then let it go into default or collections or kept it from the court. Even if you are not looking to finance anything right now, you may need to and it's better to have things cleaned up now then have to explain it later. IMHO

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Shevy said...

Just wanted to point out that, with the change in blog template, a few lines in this post are no longer really visible.

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Nothing like a nice laugh once in a while to take the load off your mind.