aardvark

My god, and I thought I worried about trivial things! This is just sily to stress out over. 1) Refuse to provide SSN. Tell them you dont have one. Offer a deposit. 2) Provide a fake SSN. I gave ATT a fake SSN and they couldnt verify it or whatever so they made me leave a $50 deposit. I gave a fake SSN for privacy reasons since I dont want my home address linked to my SSN. As long as its not being used for fraud, its not a problem.

I pulled CHEX and found an inquiry from WAMU one year ago. I called WAMU and chase took them over. I do have accounts with Chase but NEVER with WAMU. Chase said that if someone opened an account fraudulantly it would show up in their system as its all linked to my SSN so I have nothing to worry about. I am going to dispute this inquiry with CHEX. I also have an inquiry from Patelco. I opened the account for a couple months and closed it when they dropped their HSA rates in half. They didnt have a problem closing it and cut me a check for the $30 I had in the savings account. HSA had $0 as I had not yet contributed. I figure it cant hurt to dispute the inquiry of Patelco. I also have 2 inquiries from Schwab, 4 months apart, one for checking and one for HYSavings. And one inquiry from Alliant. I am concerned 5 inquiries may seem like a lot. Technically I also have checking accounts with USAA, 2 small local CUs and Penfed CU, and none of those 5 were reported as inquiries. I also opened a personal and business checking with Chase last month for signup bonus, and that wasnt on my Chex report yet either. Perhaps due to timing or maybe they didnt pull it because I was an existing CC customer for 3 years.

I just wanted to do the free trial, with no intention of keeping it and as soon as I called to cancel the free trial, they told me I was already at a reduced 9.95 rate. I said I want to cancel anyway. I get $5/month EX only daily pulls through USAA consumer info.

I have 20 lines reporting, 10 are open 10 are closed. the open ones have about $50k open credit and under 2% overall utilization at any time.

I am not doing credit repair. I am 26 years old and never had a FICO above 800. I think I hit 780 or 790 but then I started playing bonus signup games and dropped EQ to 720. I currently have all the credit I need for at least 3 years. I use my Schwab 2% card ($5k limit) and Penfed 5% gas card ($2k limit) and pay it off in full monthly. My goal now is to reach FICO 800 so I can buy a house in 5 or 6 years. I froze my credit reports for 4 reasons: 1) Sometimes places do hard pulls for no reason. They are supposed to be soft but go hard. 2) It provides some protection against identity theft 3) It allows me to selectively unfreeze TU and show a FICO 50 points higher than EQ 4) I will not be applying for any new credit cards or LOC so theres no need to keep them open. I have zero derogs and the only factors leading to a sub 800 score are low account age and the 20 inquiries on EQ. I cant really do anything but wait, however if I push off the EQ inquiries before the 2 year drop off, it will make me feel good about myself even if I am not planning on using the credit for anything

I have 20 inquiries on EQ, 7 on EX and 0 on TU. I had 0 on TU because I froze it. For academic purposes I want to try to bump down some of the EQ inquiries. I signed up for a EX - daily pull through USAA for $5/month. I signed up for a free 30 day trial of daily TU pulling and have been doing daily pulls of TU and EX for the last 20 days. I have read conflicting and confusing things about bumpage so I am not really sure if doing soft pulls of either of those will affect EQ at all. I recently signed up for a 7 day trial of CCT - which does a TU/EQ/EX pull daily. Today was my first day. I remember seeing on one of my numerous reports, a place that showed soft inquiries. I have been doing so many free trials that I dont remember where I saw it. I was a little disappointed in that the soft inquiries from my bumpage attempts were showing up on the same line with multiple dates. I dont know if this means bumpage will never occur or just that the credit report pooled those softies into one box of the report for printing purposes. I dont need to get credit anytime in 2 years so I can just wait for them to fall off, but my TU score is 770 and my EQ is 720. I'd love to bump off some of those 20 inquiries to bring EQ back up. Last week I froze EX and EQ too. If for some strange reason I do need a credit pull, I can selectively unfreeze TU. I am going to cancel True Credit when the trial is up because its not worth money to me to bump off the EQ inquiries. I may continue to keep paying $5/month for USAA pulls just because its cheap and can help me check for identity fraud.

I see a lot of people talking about Penfed and Nordys. I have a penfed, and the 5% gas is obviously what makes it special, but what is nordy's and why is it special? I also like my Schwab 2% card. USAA gave me two $10k limit Amex that I dont use but keep open for low overall utilization. Most of my other cards are below $8k CL. I used to have an HSBC Orchard 2% card, but I didnt use it anymore once I got the Schwab, and HSBC is considered a subprime lender so I figured to a person looking over my report, it would be looked upon negatively and closed it. The CL was only $1900 and the card was less than one year old so it didn't really hurt my credit score with respect to Age + Utilization. What cards do you have or do you want that are considered to be prestigious on these forums? Bragging rights, i suppose

I am in Florida. I dont really use much each month. I PIF each month and spend about $500 to $1k per month typically on credit cards. Currently my report shows $1500 due because I had a large purchase, and it reported before I PIF. I am going to start paying my CC bills on a weekly basis to avoid anything posting on my credit report as a balance. The extra float in todays low interest rate environment for a few hundred dollars isnt worth much. Since I made the initial post i Froze all 3 accounts. I Have more than enough CCs to last me through grad school and if I really need to apply for something, I can unfreeze one for $10 temporarily. I really just use Schwab 2% card and Penfed 5% gas card now anyway and the credit lines greatly exceed anything I need to put on there in a monthly basis. So we know for sure that old CLOSED credit lines that are reported, still contribute to the FICO? Thus by getting a positively reporting closed line removed from the report, it will decrease my FICO? There is one credit card I never had from Discover that is reporting as 6 years old, closed by issuer with $1k credit line. I never had that. Dispute it or not? Its a positive payment thing, but I am concerned about "closed by issuer". I heard thats considered a negative? I dont even remember having the card to begin with. Maybe I was an authorized user on my moms at the time. All my other closed accounts say "closed by me"

What will the effect of having $50k of student loans do to my FICO? Will they start reporting to the credit report now, or 6 months after I graduate? While it does increase my debt to income ratio, I dont belive theres anything on my credit report about income. So I cant imagine that ratio can be built into the credit score. Also my income now has dropped to zero. I have no other debt. Any ideas how this will affect me?

The thread title is slightly misleading, but I am a newbie to this forum I have spent a lot of time on FWF and numerous posts write great things about this forum so I wanted to check it out and get some expert advice. Right now my credit scores are between 720 and 770 depending on which report is pulled. I have no delinquent accounts. I am 26 years old and my mother put me on a few of her accounts as an AU to help start my credit, and I have done a good job keeping it up. When I pull my reports, the main problems are account age and inquiries. I have 20 inquiries on one of my reports, 7 on another and 0 on TU. I froze TU a year ago, as an experiment. Its score is 50 points higher due to lack of inquiries. I figure I can play the freezing game and unfreeze TU and freeze EX and EQ if necessary. I have been cleaning up the report from old addresses, old job, and phone number. I am a privacy freak and have a Mailboxes ETC address on my drivers license and credit report. Unfortunately my childhood address is still listed due to being an AU under my mom. I am working on clearing that up too. One thing that makes my report appear "dirty" is having many CC accounts closed by user. I shut down about 10 cards I got for rewards purposes or that I was AU on under my mother who subsequently closed her account. They all indicate closed by user. The reason I closed the cards rather than hide them in a drawer, is because issuers started closing unused accounts last year, and my understanding is that its better to list closed by user than closed by issuer. So I shut them down in advance. I was considering disputing old closed accounts off my record. Since none are deliquent, and since I am moderately good at social engineering, I figure it may be possible to get them removed to "clean up" the report. Its several pages long showing all these closed accounts. I do recall reading that they "fall off" after 7 years or something to that effect. I can only imagine how "dirty" an AOR persons credit report looks I read that its good to diversify credit types, so I opened a line of credit from penfed and alliant as overdraft protection on the checking accounts. I have not used them, but they are active and I believe they will remain active even if unused, indefinitely. I dont think the $2k line of credit will be closed by the credit unions. They do show up on a different type of credit under the report. I think this is good. I never had a mortgage or car payment. I am going to grad school now and taking out my first student loans ever, which I plan on paying on time. I heard having a credit card with an open line such as an AMEX makes your report look better too. I dont know if its this is true. Is there anything I can do to make my credit report better? I am trying the bumpage trick, through USAAs $5/month credit monitoring that allows daily pulls of EX (or EQ, I forget). I dont know if it still works but USAA gets a 50% discount for the service to its members and I like having it to check for fraud. I know after 2 years those 20 inquiries will fall off anyway and my accounts will age by then too. Any ideas appreciated. I dont need an amazing credit score now, but I look at this as a game. Its fun for me