First of all I don't think I have bad credit. I am just trying to understand the credit scoring. Last summer my credit score was 685. Then I bought a house in Dec and opened up a few credit cards. I received some fantastic offers for certain credit cards. 0% apr etc... I decided to pull my credit again to see if I was over 700 and to my surprise I was down to 650??? Can someone please help on trying to understand this. I know they score negative on the amount of inquiries that you have had but would it lower it that much? if so how long will it take to get back to 685? AND how bad is my credit in the 600's? what should be my goal score? I doubt I ever get close to 900. Bascially what score would I be able to buy anything I want at any % rates. Like for example 0% financing for a new car. Plus this credit score I got on line and it was merged from all 3 credit bureaus..
That was not a real score. The only real one is FICO, which is what Equifax uses. Those new cards may have hampered you score. They hurt until the accounts get some age on them, usually when they hit their first anniversary. Hope that makes sense.
Toyota has advertised that to get their best APR on a car that you need a 680 FICO.. I have heard that some of the others require about 700. 650 is not too bad. On Experians Credit Expert, my 655 puts me at the high end of the higher than average risk. At 666, I was in the average risk group. My goal is to go above 700.
That's an incorrect statement. Experian utilizes the Fair, Issac model to generate FICO. The Equifax model is referred to as Emperica, and TU's score is the Beacon. These three models are the three models used to generate your risk scores at each of the three CRA's. People commonly use the word FICO when they are actually referring to a 'risk score', which may or may not be based on FICO. In addition, may creditors have their OWN derivitive of a risk score model (many based on one of the three models as a baseline) and when dealing with them, you're using their risk scores.
