Personal Credit Thread

[tifosi77]

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action

The only place where you can get free copies of all three of your credit bureau reports, once a year. I've mentioned it before, but I use Credit Karma to monitor my credit, and it's been very useful.

If i use these, will i be bombarded with spam?

Annualcreditreport.com was established by the reporting bureaus following passage of a fair credit reporting law ten+ years ago. They don't really have any services or products, they are just a conduit to accessing all of your credit reports in one go. (Which you are entitled to once per year free of charge) So they are a spam-free zone as far as I know.

Credit Karma does throw out the occasional spam email, but you can opt out of pretty much everything and just get alerts and/or reminders. I just checked and since we moved to SF I've gotten a total of five emails from CK, all of which were related to things related to my change of address, and one notice that there was a hard inquiry on my report (pursuant to my background check prior to starting my new job).

[NTP66]

Virtually every credit card will give you your FICO score each month these days for free, and different companies use different bureaus, so you can generally see where you stand with each.

[skullman80]

Yeah both my capital one card and discover card both give fico scores that update monthly I think. The capital one actually updates every week I think.

[BigMck]

AMX and Pen Fed Credit Union have 2 different numbers for my FICO score. A few digits apart, but it makes me wonder which is accurate, or if they are legit FICO scores.

[dodint]

USAA uses a different metric. Vantage score or something like that.

[NTP66]

It depends on if they use the same bureau (I haven't checked my PenFed one ever), and when exactly they last checked. My scores can vary up to 30 points between bureaus.

[skullman80]

Yeah there can be some variations across each place. I know when I got my last car loan, my credit score there was actually higher than I thought because they used some variation where it weighed your score more heavily on your car loan history or something. It was like 20 points higher than I had expected when they pulled it.

[Kaiser]

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action

The only place where you can get free copies of all three of your credit bureau reports, once a year. I've mentioned it before, but I use Credit Karma to monitor my credit, and it's been very useful.

If i use these, will i be bombarded with spam?

Annualcreditreport.com was established by the reporting bureaus following passage of a fair credit reporting law ten+ years ago. They don't really have any services or products, they are just a conduit to accessing all of your credit reports in one go. (Which you are entitled to once per year free of charge) So they are a spam-free zone as far as I know.

Credit Karma does throw out the occasional spam email, but you can opt out of pretty much everything and just get alerts and/or reminders. I just checked and since we moved to SF I've gotten a total of five emails from CK, all of which were related to things related to my change of address, and one notice that there was a hard inquiry on my report (pursuant to my background check prior to starting my new job).

Cool, i'll be checking that out

[tifosi77]

Yeah there can be some variations across each place. I know when I got my last car loan, my credit score there was actually higher than I thought because they used some variation where it weighed your score more heavily on your car loan history or something. It was like 20 points higher than I had expected when they pulled it.

That happened to me as well, but not quite that much different. Which was nice, since they were only offering $700 for my car on trade in......

[columbia]

Credit Karma is also offering free tax prep, starting this year. Still waiting for an email on all of the deets.

[dodint]

If it's anything like TurboTax it'll free 1040 and then some fee to actually transmit the file and then $40 per state for those.

I did get my single W-2 today, though. Just need to get my wife's two...

[mac5155]

I don't think I'll use anything other than a Southwest card. I've gotten so many free flights off it.

Just got approved for my 8th Citi AAdvantage card [in the last year] this morning, for this very purpose. Churning these (and the CitiBusiness AA and Barclaycard Aviator) has my AA account bloated, and that's just in the bonus miles. My wife thinks I'm nuts, but she doesn't complain about free tickets and free first class upgrades.

Jeez, does that screw your credit report?

[NTP66]

I don't think I'll use anything other than a Southwest card. I've gotten so many free flights off it.

Just got approved for my 8th Citi AAdvantage card [in the last year] this morning, for this very purpose. Churning these (and the CitiBusiness AA and Barclaycard Aviator) has my AA account bloated, and that's just in the bonus miles. My wife thinks I'm nuts, but she doesn't complain about free tickets and free first class upgrades.

Jeez, does that screw your credit report?

All in all, it resulted in a drop of about 25 points, but given that it was already in the 800s it's not really an issue. I think I'm done churning cards for a while, so that should bring things back to where it was in the next 6 months or so.

[Troy Loney]

Credit inquiries expire pretty quick I think, and have pretty limited impact on your report.

[Beveridge]

I've had the Chase Amazon card for several years and just got notified of it going up to 5% so it must apply if you already have the card.

[MWB]

Yeah there can be some variations across each place. I know when I got my last car loan, my credit score there was actually higher than I thought because they used some variation where it weighed your score more heavily on your car loan history or something. It was like 20 points higher than I had expected when they pulled it.

Same.

And I'll second credit karma.

[mac5155]

I currently have 3 credit cards and about $26k worth of credit line. One card has 0 balance, one has about 10% and one has about 60%. I rarely use the CCs except to get points.

The 10% one is paid off monthly.
The 60% has very low interest until December 2017 at which point it will be paid off too. It's a high utilization because of the interest rate but it also has the lowest credit line.
The 0 balance card, I'll probably never use again.
should I cancel 0 balance card? It will take my credit line down about $9k.
Or, should I split up the balance on the 60% one across the two cards? 0 balance card is offering a promo 0% APR for balance transfers.
Or third option, cancel 0 balance card and ask for line increase on 60% card to take utilization down (results in a credit report I believe)

[LITT]

if there's no annual fee i wouldnt close it. keep your credit amnt up, number of accts up and average age up

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

This could be an inaccurate statement, but keeping it open would also help with the time the accounts have been established, no?

[mac5155]

Yes, that is my second largest line and my oldest revolving credit account. There is no annual fee. I'll just leave it open then.

[dodint]

I have always wondered if the metric was age of oldest revolving account, a weighted age calculation, or just an average of revolving accounts.

My oldest revolving account is a shitty $1,000 credit card with an annual fee. It has $0 balance and is only there because it's my oldest account. If it's an average thing then I don't lose much by dumping it because my 'real' credit card is probably only a year or two newer.

[mac5155]

I just feel like my credit score is creeping upwards for the past year or two, but nothing really enough to move the needle drastically. My wife's, on the other hand, seems to skyrocket in the past year. I was just thinking what i can do to get over the hump. A car loan will be falling off Thursday actually, as I sell back my Volkswagen, so that should help.

[dodint]

I just saw today that I jumped 50 points the first week of January. The significant change being that I sold my house and used the profit to pay off my revolving credit. heh.

[tifosi77]

Paying off an installment loan has a very small positive impact on your credit score. In fact, it may actually lower it a few points, depending on the formula. A credit card remains open even if you have no balance, so that stays as an active account and demonstrates 'utilization'. But once you pay off a car loan (or mortgage) there are some models that will regard you as less creditworthy, because you know have fewer credit accounts.

It's completely stupid.

[tifosi77]

Also, the potential negative impact of paying off the car loan will be multiplied if that loan was your oldest credit account.