credit rating

i was in good standing when i got my car 2 years ago....now we're trying to invest some $ (long term) and i'm having trouble due to my credit score. i always pay bills on time, so i'm not sure what the problem is....how will i ever get a house if i can't dump a few hundred into a mutal fund?

i'm really freaking out!

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Posted by bonch20

that's what i thought, but i always pay in full each month

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very interesting. You may want to call a credit specialist to help you go through your report. I hate to say it, but maybe there is some activity on it that isn't from you (identity theft, etc).

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Posted by yelley77

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Posted by bonch20

that's what i thought, but i always pay in full each month

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very interesting. You may want to call a credit specialist to help you go through your report. I hate to say it, but maybe there is some activity on it that isn't from you (identity theft, etc).

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thanks! do you have anyone to recommend?

i was thinking we were denied cause of the financial market, but it didn't make sense if i'm in good standing....

have you checked your score to see what it is? I would do that and on your report it will show you what might be wrong. Dh had stuff on there that shouldn't have been on there. His credit score was still good but the problem was that bc of 3 things that shouldn't have been on there his debt was high. Just one CC that wasn't supposed to be on there was $25k and the others were not far behind so you can imagine what it was showing. THese 3 were credit cards that were all closed for a long time and he just had a joint card. If its something that shouldn't be on there then its easily fixed. We had to call up the companies and get letters from them and send them in so they can be taken off the credit report. It's not just about paying your credit cards on time.

Also, have any companies had to pull up your credit report? such as mortgage companies or anything you were trying to get a loan for. If so then each time somebody checks your credit report they take off points and if its done several times then it can go down quite a bit

believe it or not, sometimes paying your balances in full can hurt your credit score, because it's not really seen as establishing credit. also, when you have zero balance but your total available credit is pretty high, that can be seen as a negative since 'generally people who have a lot of credit available tend to use it. This makes them a less attractive credit risk.'

it's totally crazy, but it can affect your score.

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Posted by teenigrrl

believe it or not, sometimes paying your balances in full can hurt your credit score, because it's not really seen as establishing credit. also, when you have zero balance but your total available credit is pretty high, that can be seen as a negative since 'generally people who have a lot of credit available tend to use it. This makes them a less attractive credit risk.'

it's totally crazy, but it can affect your score.

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it does s*ck but yes they hold it against you. DH not long ago paid off most of his credit cards in full. Our mortgage broker had told us that paying it off in full can effect you, and not only that but the CC hates it too. After Dh paid his cards in full you would think it was a great thing but some CC's they put on hold and when DH asked they said 'oh we have to review some things so in the meantime you cant use your card' what a**holes

bloomies does the same thing with me. I don't use it much just when I really need to, so since I dont use it very often or don't go crazy when I do, i pay it off all the time. I always bring it back to 0 balance. I had called to get increase my limit and they were such a**holes about it. I told them that I currently owe no money and if they look at my history they will say that I usually pay it off so don't see what the problem is and they said no. It's like they hold it against you for always paying it off.

Some of what is written above is a little confusing and I am not sure it is all correct- I would pull your credit report and look through all three bureaus and make sure that everything is correct and then check your score.

then if all is clean, do some research on cleaning up your credit- good sources are rbert kiyosaki & suze orman

good luck

it's all because they want to make $$ off of you. when you pay off your balance in full, they don't make anything from you, so they make you pay in other ways.

we're actually about to pay off all of our debt in the next couple of weeks. i just hope the mortgage lender do not hold that against us when applying for our mortgage. i don't know just how quickly our credit reports will reflect that we now have zero balances. maybe we should wait until after we have our mortage commitment to pay up

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Posted by teenigrrl

it's all because they want to make $$ off of you. when you pay off your balance in full, they don't make anything from you, so they make you pay in other ways.

we're actually about to pay off all of our debt in the next couple of weeks. i just hope the mortgage lender do not hold that against us when applying for our mortgage. i don't know just how quickly our credit reports will reflect that we now have zero balances. maybe we should wait until after we have our mortage commitment to pay up

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it takes a little bit for something like that to be reflected- but when you apply for a mortgage- they will look at a couple key indicators- debt to asset- they will subtract your debt from your assets (if you have too much debt this can be bad)- they will also look at your income to housing ratio- they will have a number-ours was 19% for our coop- that you cant go beneath.

Were you already preapproved or did you get a committment letter?

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Posted by futuremrsfab

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Posted by teenigrrl

it's all because they want to make $$ off of you. when you pay off your balance in full, they don't make anything from you, so they make you pay in other ways.

we're actually about to pay off all of our debt in the next couple of weeks. i just hope the mortgage lender do not hold that against us when applying for our mortgage. i don't know just how quickly our credit reports will reflect that we now have zero balances. maybe we should wait until after we have our mortage commitment to pay up

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it takes a little bit for something like that to be reflected- but when you apply for a mortgage- they will look at a couple key indicators- debt to asset- they will subtract your debt from your assets (if you have too much debt this can be bad)- they will also look at your income to housing ratio- they will have a number-ours was 19% for our coop- that you cant go beneath.

Were you already preapproved or did you get a committment letter?

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it doesn't take that long for it to show on your credit report that you paid off your cc's. We had to do this before we got a mortgage. So after Dh paid off his cc's we kept checking his credit report to see if it came off, since we had to wait to wait for this to happen before we did a mortgage. Most of the CC's he paid off showed they were paid off the following month. When I called our mortgage broker in july and said ok we paid it off now what, he said he isn't going to check his credit report right now bc everytime he checks it his score goes down and he knows they wont all be off right away and he doesnt want to have to check it more than once, so he told us to contact him august 15 so about 6 weeks later and he will check it. So we waited 6 weeks and had the mortgage broker pull up his credit report and already his score had went up and he was able to see on the credit report that he took care of these things.

So if you pay things off, i would wait until the middle of the following month or 2 months and it will show up on your credit report

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Posted by Espo22

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Posted by futuremrsfab

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Posted by teenigrrl

it's all because they want to make $$ off of you. when you pay off your balance in full, they don't make anything from you, so they make you pay in other ways.

we're actually about to pay off all of our debt in the next couple of weeks. i just hope the mortgage lender do not hold that against us when applying for our mortgage. i don't know just how quickly our credit reports will reflect that we now have zero balances. maybe we should wait until after we have our mortage commitment to pay up

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it takes a little bit for something like that to be reflected- but when you apply for a mortgage- they will look at a couple key indicators- debt to asset- they will subtract your debt from your assets (if you have too much debt this can be bad)- they will also look at your income to housing ratio- they will have a number-ours was 19% for our coop- that you cant go beneath.

Were you already preapproved or did you get a committment letter?

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it doesn't take that long for it to show on your credit report that you paid off your cc's. We had to do this before we got a mortgage. So after Dh paid off his cc's we kept checking his credit report to see if it came off, since we had to wait to wait for this to happen before we did a mortgage. Most of the CC's he paid off showed they were paid off the following month. When I called our mortgage broker in july and said ok we paid it off now what, he said he isn't going to check his credit report right now bc everytime he checks it his score goes down and he knows they wont all be off right away and he doesnt want to have to check it more than once, so he told us to contact him august 15 so about 6 weeks later and he will check it. So we waited 6 weeks and had the mortgage broker pull up his credit report and already his score had went up and he was able to see on the credit report that he took care of these things.

So if you pay things off, i would wait until the middle of the following month or 2 months and it will show up on your credit report

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we don't have our commitment or approval yet - the house still has to be appraised. we only just went into contract last week, so i know it'll still take some time. our mortgage broker already ran our credit reports, and our scores are very good, nothing negative on our reports. i'm just worried that if the reports have to be run again for some reason, and we have zero debt, that it'll hurt our score.

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Posted by teenigrrl

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Posted by Espo22

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Posted by futuremrsfab

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Posted by teenigrrl

it's all because they want to make $$ off of you. when you pay off your balance in full, they don't make anything from you, so they make you pay in other ways.

we're actually about to pay off all of our debt in the next couple of weeks. i just hope the mortgage lender do not hold that against us when applying for our mortgage. i don't know just how quickly our credit reports will reflect that we now have zero balances. maybe we should wait until after we have our mortage commitment to pay up

---

it takes a little bit for something like that to be reflected- but when you apply for a mortgage- they will look at a couple key indicators- debt to asset- they will subtract your debt from your assets (if you have too much debt this can be bad)- they will also look at your income to housing ratio- they will have a number-ours was 19% for our coop- that you cant go beneath.

Were you already preapproved or did you get a committment letter?

---

it doesn't take that long for it to show on your credit report that you paid off your cc's. We had to do this before we got a mortgage. So after Dh paid off his cc's we kept checking his credit report to see if it came off, since we had to wait to wait for this to happen before we did a mortgage. Most of the CC's he paid off showed they were paid off the following month. When I called our mortgage broker in july and said ok we paid it off now what, he said he isn't going to check his credit report right now bc everytime he checks it his score goes down and he knows they wont all be off right away and he doesnt want to have to check it more than once, so he told us to contact him august 15 so about 6 weeks later and he will check it. So we waited 6 weeks and had the mortgage broker pull up his credit report and already his score had went up and he was able to see on the credit report that he took care of these things.

So if you pay things off, i would wait until the middle of the following month or 2 months and it will show up on your credit report

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we don't have our commitment or approval yet - the house still has to be appraised. we only just went into contract last week, so i know it'll still take some time. our mortgage broker already ran our credit reports, and our scores are very good, nothing negative on our reports. i'm just worried that if the reports have to be run again for some reason, and we have zero debt, that it'll hurt our score.

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yeah definitely tell them from now that you do NOT want them to check your credit report often. This other mortgage broker did this to Dh quite a few times. Unlike our current mortgage broker, when Dh got a letter from Amex saying that he no longer had this card and hasn't for years and needs to come off as active on his report, the guy checked immediately and then kept checking it until he saw it off, he didnt tell us he was checking it all the time. He checked it so much that we even got a letter saying that there have been too many inquiries made on dh's credit report and this has brought his score down. I was really upset, and was thinking 'don't they f*in know this, why would they check so many times' and to show just how often it was done, we even got a letter about it which rarely happens. Our current mortgage broker said that people can only check your credit report if you authorize it, and we can take some of those inquiries off his report by getting a letter and saying we only authorized it one time lets say, and the person who made so many inquiries would have to show proof that they were given permission to check it so many times if they dont have the proof then they will take some of the inquiries off.

Be careful your credit cards should never be near your high credit amount (it should be less than half your limit)
Don't close any cards you have a history with...that will lower your score
Don't make late payments, or minimum payments
Don't open too many cards at one time..they go through as incuries and that also will lower your score

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Posted by Espo22

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Posted by futuremrsfab

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Posted by teenigrrl

it's all because they want to make $$ off of you. when you pay off your balance in full, they don't make anything from you, so they make you pay in other ways.

we're actually about to pay off all of our debt in the next couple of weeks. i just hope the mortgage lender do not hold that against us when applying for our mortgage. i don't know just how quickly our credit reports will reflect that we now have zero balances. maybe we should wait until after we have our mortage commitment to pay up

---

it takes a little bit for something like that to be reflected- but when you apply for a mortgage- they will look at a couple key indicators- debt to asset- they will subtract your debt from your assets (if you have too much debt this can be bad)- they will also look at your income to housing ratio- they will have a number-ours was 19% for our coop- that you cant go beneath.

Were you already preapproved or did you get a committment letter?

---

it doesn't take that long for it to show on your credit report that you paid off your cc's. We had to do this before we got a mortgage. So after Dh paid off his cc's we kept checking his credit report to see if it came off, since we had to wait to wait for this to happen before we did a mortgage. Most of the CC's he paid off showed they were paid off the following month. When I called our mortgage broker in july and said ok we paid it off now what, he said he isn't going to check his credit report right now bc everytime he checks it his score goes down and he knows they wont all be off right away and he doesnt want to have to check it more than once, so he told us to contact him august 15 so about 6 weeks later and he will check it. So we waited 6 weeks and had the mortgage broker pull up his credit report and already his score had went up and he was able to see on the credit report that he took care of these things.

So if you pay things off, i would wait until the middle of the following month or 2 months and it will show up on your credit report

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mine took about 60 days to report- I dont know if every creditor does things the same way- mine was not credit card debt- it was a student loan.

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Posted by futuremrsfab

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Posted by Espo22

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Posted by futuremrsfab

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Posted by teenigrrl

it's all because they want to make $$ off of you. when you pay off your balance in full, they don't make anything from you, so they make you pay in other ways.

we're actually about to pay off all of our debt in the next couple of weeks. i just hope the mortgage lender do not hold that against us when applying for our mortgage. i don't know just how quickly our credit reports will reflect that we now have zero balances. maybe we should wait until after we have our mortage commitment to pay up

---

it takes a little bit for something like that to be reflected- but when you apply for a mortgage- they will look at a couple key indicators- debt to asset- they will subtract your debt from your assets (if you have too much debt this can be bad)- they will also look at your income to housing ratio- they will have a number-ours was 19% for our coop- that you cant go beneath.

Were you already preapproved or did you get a committment letter?

---

it doesn't take that long for it to show on your credit report that you paid off your cc's. We had to do this before we got a mortgage. So after Dh paid off his cc's we kept checking his credit report to see if it came off, since we had to wait to wait for this to happen before we did a mortgage. Most of the CC's he paid off showed they were paid off the following month. When I called our mortgage broker in july and said ok we paid it off now what, he said he isn't going to check his credit report right now bc everytime he checks it his score goes down and he knows they wont all be off right away and he doesnt want to have to check it more than once, so he told us to contact him august 15 so about 6 weeks later and he will check it. So we waited 6 weeks and had the mortgage broker pull up his credit report and already his score had went up and he was able to see on the credit report that he took care of these things.

So if you pay things off, i would wait until the middle of the following month or 2 months and it will show up on your credit report

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mine took about 60 days to report- I dont know if every creditor does things the same way- mine was not credit card debt- it was a student loan.

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yeah 60 days is normal, thats why i even said above to wait about 6 weeks to 2 months which is 60 days. Like I sad, after 6 weeks most of it showed but not all but thats bc dh didnt pay off just 1 card, he paid off about 8 or so. But after 2 months it all showed on the credit report. Actually I told the mortgage broker to even wait a few days after august 15th since the middle of the month is when it would show on your report and thought it was best to wait a few days after to be sure. So by the time he checked it probably was more like 7 weeks so very close to 60 days.