Jenn: That's nuts. I've seen some WWIII credit reports before. Lots to be honest, but I've never seen one that low. That's gotta be nuts. I'd fall out of my chair too. The funny thing is that people like that come in all smiles and confident you're gonna give them credit when they KNOW their credit stinks
. What the hell are they thinking????
The funniest are the ones that somehow think we're never gonna find out just how bad their credit is. Like we'll just approve a loan and find out LATER or something....
Don't you just love those people that love to waste your time????
2turbo4u: That's kind of a trick question. Let me try and answer it by giving you a scenario.
Lots of people mistakenly think that the way to improve their credit score is to pay off and CLOSE as many accounts as possible. BIG no-no. You can certainly pay them off, but DO NOT CLOSE THE ACCOUNT. You can tear up the cards if you want, just DON'T close the account. Some accounts you have no choice (installment loans), but for revolving accounts you do most of the time.
The reason why is because a portion of your credit score is derived from the ratio of HIGH credit (open) to available credit (open). So if you water down the pool from which that ratio is derived, you are lowering your score even if you pay every remaining open account on time. Example:
Mr. X has 5 cc accounts, a car, a mortgage, and a 700 score. The car and the mortgage are installment debt and are pretty much maxed out and not much you can do about that. Therefore, the cc's are going to make the biggest point fluctuation. He wants to raise his score. The best way to do that is to pay down his cc's to where he has a balance of 1/3 of the high credit limit or less on each of his cards BUT LEAVES THEM OPEN. Why? Because should he just pay off and close those cc's, his score will be from only 2 accts that are both maxed out (car and house) so it will be considerably lower rather than higher. If you just pay or maintain your accts, especially revolving accts, at or below 1/3 of the high credit limit.....you will maintain as high of score as normal.
The absolute highest score you will earn is if you have all your accts open but no balances. This is not usually realistic because the creditor usually will close your acct for non-use, but I've seen it done. For example, someone that uses credit cards every so often but pays off the balance at the end of the month and has a house that's paid off and cars that have been paid off. Sometimes those creditors stay reporting on your credit AFTER you've paid them off for up to 7 yrs. It just shows up as a closed acct, but you get the picture.
Usually credit reporting agencies do not report acct activity any sooner than 30 days. Realistically it will be more like 60 days before it will be reported on all your bureaus once you settle something with a creditor. Sometimes it won't even show up then. You have to do the leg work yourself and contact the bureaus to make them update your file.
So to answer your question: It usually takes 30-60 days from the time you settle something or pay something off or make a large payment before it adjusts your score. It can be done faster, but it will be very expensive and requires someone like me that has accts with the repository to have it done quicker. That's called a "re-score" BTW and it usually costs by the acct and by the repository. So if it's $50/acct/repository.....1 acct would be $150. It can and does get expensive. The good thing is that if you know what to do, you can do it all yourself for little or no cost.
Originally Posted by Jaimecbr900
Jenn: That's nuts. I've seen some WWIII credit reports before. Lots to be honest, but I've never seen one that low. That's gotta be nuts. I'd fall out of my chair too. The funny thing is that people like that come in all smiles and confident you're gonna give them credit when they KNOW their credit stinks
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