Okay you don’t have too get a card or serveral cards you can ‘borrow’ someone elses by being an authorized user, just make sure that person is in good standing with the company, no lates, high credit limit and 30% balance.
Second thing is the FICO company lies. Yes it’s true you do need credit to get credit. It’s how you handle the credit determines your score. Getting too many credit pulls hurts and getting too many turn down hurts.
To see your score go to www.myfico.com and pay the 12.95 per agency to see your credit profile with score. This is the best way to know what your borrowing power is. The higher the score the more you can borrow. 680 is good 700 is better and 750/850 you are multi-platnium.
The CD thing is how they use to do it but now, few banks offer signature loans like that. Credit Unions are starting to phase them out also.
If folks don’t know it, being FICO compliant is a part of every major fortune 500 company and we are 80% there. I don’t not into conspieracy but I do belive this one as I’ve seen the scoring, FICO system change in major ways since I entered the mortgage business in 1997 to now.
Get a credit card to improve credit score??? - Posted by Sterling
Posted by Sterling on October 09, 2003 at 19:35:11:
I don’t have a credit card and frankly I don’t want one. I got overextended years ago, finally cut them all up and got them paid off. Now the only debts I have are the mortgage on my house and a car loan. However, now that I’m interested in buying investment properties I’m hearing that if I expect to raise my credit score I’ll have to get a credit card. Is this true? A lot of people are saying “yes” but a booklet from Fair Isaac warns against getting a credit card just to improve your score.
If I want a credit card it probably will be easy enough to get one. I get offers in the mail all the time from a certain bank (you probably know the one). Their latest offer seems pretty good, a low rate and no annual fee. However, I’ve heard that this bank specializes in offering cards to high risk customers. If that’s the case then I’d expect loan officers to know that and my possessing one of these cards might be a negative. The fine print in their offer seems to signal an expectation that I’ll screw up and trigger an increase in rate. The fine print also states that, even though they say “pre approved”, I’m not really.
Finally, what about this idea of the “credit chase” where you start by borrowing against a CD, then asking for unsecured credit, then asking for higher limits. This idea seems so transparent that I wonder if anyone would ever fall for it. On the other hand, maybe the computers at FICO are not programmed to recognize it.
Posted by Sterling on October 12, 2003 at 22:40:16:
I just looked at my credit reports tonight and there is an item on one of them that is very negative and very WRONG. It’s a 90 days past due on the second mortgage on my house. It’s simply inaccurate. It’s wrong, wrong, WRONG! I’ve never been late on a mortgage payment. You can bet I’m going to challenge that.
And we just refinanced our house. I wonder how much lower the rate on our new mortgage would have been if I’d gotten that corrected first.