mlounsbury

Thanks for the replies. I just got the report he pulled, he used Credit Plus to pull my reports. I've got 571 on EQ, 545 on TU, and 583 on EX on his reports. So it does look like the EQ is the same. As for my accounts, I currently have only one credit card open, with a $500 limit. The other things I have are two car loans and student loans. I'm still going to school, and probably will be for the next few years so I was told that since I have forbearance on those they will not count. On his report, the judgement is still not showing as paid. My wife talked to the law firm that represented Barclays on the judgement, they said they would get us the letter by tomorrow. So that is one thing we can get taken care of. The other closed account with a balance is the Merrick, which is showing about $3500. I was thinking about calling them and offering them half to get it done and paid for, hoping that might give a bump, but I was hoping to do that after we bought the house so I had cushion in case anything else came up. Everything else negative has been closed and shows zero balances. Is it even worth trying to dispute those items at this point? Or would that take to long to see if I could get any of them to drop? For you guys that do mortgages, is the letter itself enough or do you need to see it updated on the CR and the score actually go up? I'll admit that I had made mistakes in the past, but everything we needed is always paid for; rent, gas/electric/utilities, and car payments.

Forgive me if this has been asked here before, or if there's an easy way to find this. I did a search but the search feature doesn't allow me to search specific boards within the forum. To be up front, this is in the state of Maryland. At any rate, my wife and I found a house we were interested in renting to own. The owner was selling the house, but was not having many bites at his original listing price, and the listing agent suggested the owner think about renting to own. My wife and I looked at the house, and we liked it. Nice size, decent area, etc. We had thought our big holdback in buying a house was our credit, and in talking with the agent, he suggested that we pull our own scores and if we had anything that was 580 and above, he could get someone to work with us. I went home that night (2/18) and pulled my scores from MyFICO. 570 EQ, 600 EX, 615 TU. We were ecstatic because we felt like we had finally gotten things straightened out enough to the point where we might be able to buy. We told the agent we wanted to buy the house and put a contract in on it. He said he would work with the lender and get everything on that side squared away, but he felt we should be good to go. Unfortunately, the listing price on the house was lowered just before we put the contract in, and the owner got two other offers and decided to go with one of the other contracts. So the listing agent became our buyers agent and he wanted to help us buy a house. On 2/21 we looked at two more houses, and we liked one of the houses well enough to put a contract in on it. We put it in on 2/22, and the buyers came back with a counter offer on 2/23 and we accepted it that night. The sellers signed the contract on 2/27. Our agent forwarded me the information for the lender the same day, and on 2/28 the lender e-mailed me the information he needed. I faxed a majority of it to him on 2/28 and the rest on 3/2. Today we had the inspection on the house, and shortly after I get to work this afternoon I get an e-mail from the lender saying my credit score is 571 and is too low to qualify for FHA. I responded and asked him which one he pulled, because I had two that were 600+, and his response was that none of them are over 600. He has yet to say if it was my low, middle, or high score, and I'm waiting for him to send me the information. I'm a little distraught at this point because I haven't done anything that I'm aware of to negatively impact my scores. I have paid my bills on time this past month, and my balances have gone down. I have both Credit Sesame and Credit Karma, and while I know those are FAKO scores, neither have gone down from where they were last month. I know there are things that need to be fixed on my report, but when I pulled the report on 2/18 it seemed like we would be able to buy a house and continue working on the other things on my report. I have a judgement on there from Barclays, and we paid it off last year. We never got the order of satisfaction from the law firm representing them, and my wife called and they are supposed to be sending that. I also have a Merrick bank CC that is showing a balance and I am planning on paying that off as well at some point to get it off of my report. I guess my questions are these: Do loan officers and lenders use something different for credit scoring than MyFICO (Fair Issac)? My agent said they run it through some kind of filters, but is it so different that it can really drag my scores down that much? Is it possible that the order of satisfaction would fix this problem and we could continue on with the process? Thanks in advance for any help, and sorry for the long winded story.

The number that shows on the caller ID is 9045626655. The called my cell today too from a number of 8889041800. The 904 area code is Jacksonville. The 888 number has a website of http://www.ccscollect.com/ and they list Jacksonville as one of their offices.

I started getting calls from a number that I didn't recognize on my work phone, it turns out it's a place called Consumer Credit Services. I've just been picking them up and hanging it up which I know is wrong, but I've got people around where I sit and I don't really want to deal with personal business like that while they're around. I know I need to answer the call and tell them not to call my work. Anyways they decided to call one of the 800 numbers for the call centers we have her (I work for a large investment firm). I'm not sure how they got my work number I'm at now because I've never given it to a creditor and I changed positions in October of 2010 and my work number changed. Since I work in the telecom group here I can actually pull the recorded call and listen to the conversation between her and the account rep. I actually have it saved if there's any recourse here. At any rate, the woman at CCS calls the 800 number, says she can't reach me and gives the number to the account rep. He tries to call and gets some message saying the number can't be reached (never heard the message he got, so not sure what he did wrong). She gives him their internal file number and their phone number and says its important that I call ASAP, blah blah. The account rep has no clue what the call is in reference to since she's being very vague (probably because its a collection call and she can't give him personal information), so he's asking what account its in reference to or if she has an account number or something. She says that I work here and that's my office phone number she gave him. He asks if she has a SSN or something like that because there's a lot of people that work here and bam, she gives him my SSN. Now I do have investment accounts here and he was able to pull up the information for them, but I'm pretty sure I didn't give this woman authorization to give my SSN out to people, especially someone I don't know and that works for the same company as me. So, do I have any recourse here with the CA? Is this legal for them to do this?

So I had been doing good in the past after my BK7 in getting some cards and handling them properly, but had some problems at home along with our poor money management have sent pretty much all of the cards I had into collections. I'm working on paying them off, and I'm pretty much done with credit cards at this point. In October I was hired onto a new position in the firm I work for, and it requires some travel. The firm uses the corporate AMEX, but they want you to be able to get it on your on credit. All travel expenses are reimbursed by the firm after you submit it, and then you pay the bill with the reimbursement. I applied for the AMEX, but because I have collections and the BK7 they will not budge on giving me the card even though its sponsored by the company I work for. I asked my boss about getting the card that is on the firm's credit, but he didn't seem too receptive to that and I've been kind of leery about bringing it up again. He has also asked me a couple of times if I have cleaned up my credit to be able to get the AMEX. So, at this point it looks like I'm going to have to pay out of pocket to travel or find a way to get another card on my own that I can use for travel expenses. Do anyone have any thoughts about who I should look at for a card, or is my only real option a secured card? I don't have my credit reports in front of me at the present time, but I can get them later today and post some more information about what is on them if needed. Thanks in advance for any help.

Who are you considering the big 3? Fidelity, Vanguard and TRP?

Have you verified that these funds have the same ticker symbol as the original fund? I know for a fact that some companies want us to create 'custom' funds that are similar in makeup to other funds and they are not openly traded on the Dow, AMEX, etc (no ticker). You may want to check that first with your 401k provider if you haven't already.

Sorry to bump this, but I figured some people may want to know this information (from the resident T. Rowe Pricie)... We don't use Lexis, we use Intuit. We used to use GeoTrust but recently switched to Intuit (which asks questions from your EQ report). I've used other services in the past and can say that mostly all of them ask one trick question. As for the activation part, when opening a new account you would have to had to activate yourself but our system now will do it for you automatically after 24-48 hours. We have a backend system that the account is opened in right away and it takes 24-48 hours worth of processing to get into the front end database. Also, on the last page of the open account process it gives you your account number (page that tells you to print out the page for your records). If you didn't write it down from that page you'll need to wait for the new account confirmation to come to you in the mail as we cannot give that out over the phone as account number is one of our verification items. Hope this helps.

Just because the other parent works also, doesn't mean that they're not paying for someone to watch those kids. It easily costs $200/week to have someone watch your kid. Plus you add up all of the other expenses you're paying for that child and you could easily hit $15K/year to have a child. Depending on how much you and your partner make, that could take you from 6 digits down to 5 digits.

Microsoft has a sunsetting policy also. It depends on what you're downloading though. Investments sunset usually after 3 years on both Money and Quicken (they only support 3 latest versions). I believe its 4 years for banking.

People over 50 are allowed to contribute $5000 in 2007, will be $6000 starting in 2008. Also, you can contribute up until the tax deadline of April 15th.

I already responded: I am NOT charged a monthly fee. I *am* charged an annual fee. Every year in July I am assessed a $10 fee... (But you are saying since I do monthly automatic contributions I should NOT be charged this annual fee? I'm confused ) From what I know from working here and what it says in the prospectus, you should not be charged an annual fee. I would suggest calling a rep at 1-800-225-5132 and asking about this.

Reg, where you are usually right, I have to disagree with you on this one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth_401(k) What is your disagreement? 54regcab said a Roth IRA has nothing to do with where you work, which is true. You linked to information about a Roth 401(k), which DOES have to do with where you work. They are two entirely different things. I should have expanded on this more. Reg was saying that IRA's have nothing to do with where you work, which is wrong. You can have both SEP and SIMPLE IRA's, which can be through your work. These accounts are for small businesses. More information can be found here: http://www.troweprice.com/common/index3/0,...53D7622,00.html In actuality, he was wrong in both respects. You can have a roth in a 401(k), and you can have an employer sponsored IRA.

You may want to call and check with someone on that. We don't charge monthly fees, only annual ones. And according to the prospectus, since you're doing AAB, you're excepted from the fee.

Having all of your investments within one account means only one account fee. Is there something you don't like about T.Rowe Price's Real Estate Fund? TRREX link to morningstar T. Rowe is currently charging me $10/year because I don't have 4K in my Roth yet. ETA - I tried to add that to my current fund, and they want 1K to do that... Are you sure about this? From the prospectus: According to this, if you have over $2000 you don't pay the fee. Also, I am unsure how often you contribute, but if you call an account rep and set up a systematic purchase (monthly, quarterly, etc), you are also exempted from the fee. Unless you have an index fund, which personally I would suggest getting out of because the returns are so paltry compared to our other funds (Emerging Europe and Mediterranean, Latin America, New Asia, Emerging Markets Stock, European Stock are the best international, based on historical. Media and Telecomm is our best domestic fund currently based on historical). If you're still young, you need a little risk in your life. I have EEM and LAM in my 401K and had a 35% return last year. -Matt (the resident T. Rowe Pricer)