My husband and I received our FICO scores for the first time yesterday (we are hoping to buy our first home soon). His scores vary a great deal: EXP 702 TU 670 EQU 592 And mine are all lower than we need: EXP 628 TU 623 EQU 607 I have several questions: 1. Our lender said the nuber of student loans we have (around 10) is lowering our score. Will consolidating them raise it? 2. I had a MBNA card I was chronically late on. It reports as 30d past due 7x, and 60d past due 1x. (I don't know if it matters but I was in touh with them very regularly during this time to make payment arrangements. If memory serves I paid some each month but couldn't make the minimums.) Since we have been married we combined our MBNA cards into one and have not been late on that in the last 12 months at least. How can I get them to remove the late payment info? 3. I found an old cable bill on the report and paid it in full today - will this raise my score? 4. How much CAN you raise your score? Is there hope of getting into the 700s? (We want to buy this house in the next 3 months) Thanks for your advice! VaPa
The good news is you can raise your scores. The bad news is it may take more than 3 months to do. Also, paying that collection acct did absolutely nothing for your score. Instead of being reported as an open collection, it will now be reported as a paid collection. You will get 0 pts out of that. Do you have any other negatives on your reports? If so, post them here as far as what they are, how old they are etc. We can then give you some advice on how to proceed so that it benefits you, not them.
