Power up your Credit Score

They seem a little vague.

 

totally vague

 

someone wanna splain the joke?

 

Shouldn't there have been some kind of link in the orig post???

 

I'm not sure if the original poster was meaning these tips. But, to keep the thread going, here are Samantha Estes' tips posted on the yahoo board.


TIPS & FYI:

FYI:

A) Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian differentiate between major credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, etc.) and retail cards such as Structure, JC Penney, WalMart, and Lowes.

B) Keeping a zero balance on your credit cards can result in your card provider not reporting monthly payments, which can result in an adverse impact on your scores.

C) Revolving tradelines are factored in the following ways:
1 - Average amount of time accounts have been established. Example: Card A is open for 10 years and Card B is open for 1 month which the average equals 5 years.
2 - Individual length of time accounts have been established: < 6 months, < 1 year, < 2 years, > 3 years.
3 - Average percentage of credit available in comparison to credit limits: this is total percentage of total available credit on all revolving accounts related to total balance on all accounts.
4 - Individual percentage of credit available in comparison to credit limit.

D) Revolving accounts are phantom labeled "minor accounts" if your credit limit is less than $1,000 and "major accounts" if your limit is more than $1,000.


TIPS:

A) Having a total of 6 open revolving accounts is optimal for credit scoring.

B) Maintaining an even mixture of major credit cards & retail cards is optimal for credit scoring.

C) When applying for credit, it is best to only have a balance on one major card and one retail card. You will receive an extra bonus in points for only having balances on two revolving credit accounts or less. So shifting balances 45 days before applying for major credit can be beneficial.

D) Points are given each time your percentage of available of credit eclipses the following marks:
> 50%, > 65%, > 75%, and > 85%... and then of course 100% available or nothing owed.

Meaning there is no real difference in points awarded if you pay your balance from 95% of your available limit down to only 60% of your available limit. You must bring it down below the 50% mark and so on.

E) If you maintain a balance less than 25% of your limit, most retail card providers will voluntarily increase your limit every 3 to 6 months, and you may request a credit limit increase (in writing suggested) every 6 to 9 months. This mean never charging more than 25% of your limit... not just paying it off every month to less than 25%.

F) It is better to have one card with a big limit maxed out and several cards with nothing on them, as compared to several cards with moderate balances.

G) Do not upgrade a secured card to unsecured if it means you receive a new card. This will open a new account on your credit report and therefore decrease the average amount of time your accounts have been established, as well as starting over the clock on how long this particular account has been established. This also happens when you lose a card and have another one issued.

H) If you pay more than 50% of the required minimum payment before it is officially 30 days past the due date, most providers' systems are not able to distinguish between partial payments and non payment therefore keeping you from being reported 30 days late.

I) As a rule of thumb, you must have 6 consecutive months of on time payments for every 30 day late to ask a creditor to remove a derogatory remark(s) from your credit report voluntarily.

J) Dispute all cards found on your credit report with a status of "Card Lost or Stolen" as not yours. If it is verified, ask the creditor to remove the tradeline voluntarily as it is negatively impacting the average amount of time your accounts have been established and that you should not be held accountable for something beyond your control. You must also submit such a request directly to the department that handles credit reporting.

K) If you credit card provider does not report you credit limit voluntarily, max out the card (ATM cash advance & put the money away) and wait until the first statement comes reflecting the charges. Only pay the minimum that month to insure that the maxed out balance is reported to each credit bureau. Then pay off the card back to its previous lower balance after the next statement comes. The credit scoring models will now assume that your high balance is your credit limit and therefore will increase your percentage of available credit related to that account.

 

Samantha Estes works for a credit repair firm. Although she never couches her opinions with language like, "This is just my opinion," everything she offers is -- as far as I can tell, and this IS just my personal opinion, lol -- simply her personal opinion.

That said, she offers up these gems as if she was Mr. Fair's and Mr. Isaac's water girl.

How does she know that 6 accounts is optimal? Why not 4? Or 7? Or 3? So far as I can tell, FICO has never released that kind of detail, and my understanding is that the variables are fairly reflexive anyway -- what is true for my report may not be true for yours due to other confounding conditions and variables.

How does she know that FICO penalizes you for keeping zero balances? Was this a scientific study? Has she observed increases every time someone kept a revolving balance? (In my experience, and this is only my OPINION -- if only Samantha would take a lesson here, lol -- anyway, in my experience, any balance at all seems to decrease ones score.) Perhaps she means that one should occasionally keep a balance in order for the card to show some activity. Perhaps she means that one should carry a balance at least once a year. Or twice. Or three times. Whichever it is, Samantha Estes doesn't know for sure, even though she claims to know.

How does she know that "an even mixture of major credit cards & retail cards is optimal"? Did Mssrs. Fair and Isaac speak to her in a seance? Is she sure that you need to maintain that "EVEN MIXTURE" or is this just a guess? Here's MY guess. Samantha Estes is the kind of person who writes something and then believes it's true because she wrote it. Ok, that's harsh. Let me revise that. HERE's my revised guess. Samantha Estes really believes what she says is true. Better?

Whenever someone on this board headlines their post with something like "Doc and other experts...help please!?" I can't help but think, "Oh my God, I am certainly not an expert." Most people here respond the same way, I think. There are a few out there -- a very few, thankfully -- who really believe it when somebody tells them they have become an expert.

Samantha Estes is not so expert that she can spill the darkest secrets of FICO scoring. That's something I can say expertly, lol.

Doc

 

FIC presentation to FTC; most pertinent page I think is: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/creditscoring/present/sld008.htm

 

Quixote, I love it. The slide you referenced disputes Samantha Estes's tip regarding balances. Note the "0-15%" utilization cell, which doesn't differentiate between zero and anything up to 15%. Frankly, it doesn't look like Fair Isaac spilled their entire recipe on that page either. My scores have increased when I have paid down my utilization from 5-10% down to zero. Samantha Estes suggests my score should have dropped.

Again, it's not that I begrudge her offering up opinions. I offer opinions, and so do you. It's just that I tire of reading her express herself on that other board as if her opinions are factual in every case. What's even more disturbing is that others over there often read her pronouncements as if they were the law by which to live.

Doc

 

LOL Psychdoc ..... Maybe I should have just said it was posted on yahoo boards and left out Samantha.


Actually, I would love some feedback on people's actual experience with fine-tuning their credit reports.

My negatives are pretty much gone. And I'm into phase II of credit reapair.

Unfortunately, I can not get my true fico from equifax, so I have to rely on fake scores.


My scores did increase when I transferred all my balances to one card. Of course, other things could have caused the increase as well. My overall balance decreased. (I didn't stop paying, duh!)

I have more cards than 6. Recently, a new trade line was added with no score change.

 

Kelly and Doc,

Your comment are both well taken. I respect both of you, however, for those of us in the re-bulding stage, offer some more realsitic suggestions. If you are in the rebuilding, chances are you do not have a high limit card to move the money around. It is what I am striving for, but how do I get there. I am interested in how to dispute, such as Doc's trick, validation letters and correcting my credit report. I apppreciate the info you give, please continue to give, but we are all in various stages of re-building. Maybe we need a board for rebuilders and a maintanance board for those who are where they need to be creditwise. Just a suggestion , not gospel. I guess I am rambling.

 

Annie, the idea of dividing up the board has been brought up before, but almost nobody who's finished with their credit repair really wants to be cordoned off into a quiet neighborhood here, lol. For instance, most of my postings are aimed at assisting those who are still in the repair phase. If you search the board, you'll see lots of posts by "old-timers" (yeah, right, lol -- just last year I was a newbie -- how quickly we age here) aimed to newcomers to help them with rapid credit rescoring, credit repair, credit rebuilding, and more. I personally still find the credit repair topic to be lots of fun (a lot more fun than credit rebuilding, the search for subprime credit, etc., but that's just my preference obviously -- others like other stuff), which is why I suppose I'm hopelessly addicted to this board.

As for your suggestion that we old folks offer up some realistic suggestions, I try my best (and I know Kelly does too). Here are two recent posts I made along that line. They're not masterpieces, but they may help (hopefully)...

Realistic suggestions for increasing your credit score:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=197511#post197511

Realistic suggestions regarding paid chargeoffs:
http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=195705#post195705

Doc

 

Samantha is a bit of a know-it all. I remember once for example she stated no cell phones report on credit reports. I said they do on mine and my friends. We live in california and if its on ours its on at least a hundred thousand other people's credit(att wireless). She got all offended and I was just telling her to be careful about using absolute statements about credit. Many nutty emails followed from her...

Be wary of 'experts' in credit repair. I think it is wise to listen more to people's direct experiences rather than their advice.

 

Wooohooo Mudslinging! Aim for the eyes.

 

That has to be about the most IGNORANT "tip" I've ever seen.

Sure -- MAX out your CARD! Get an ATM ADVANCE and pay OUTRAGEOUS cash advance fees and interest charges!! Woo-hoo, sounds like some good advice there.

 

Thats it! Keeep that mud a'slingin!

 

Thats it! Keep that mud a'slingin!

 

Am I hearing double, or are my ears crossed?

 

Kiyi, you know, I don't think there's any problem criticizing those who offer faulty advice for profit. Your comment makes it sound like we're not being "nice" enough. This isn't mud, so don't worry, lol.

Doc