Do youse dufes track your FICO scores?

[Thumper]

I have to admit, I've never paid one bit of attention to my FICO score and have never once even bothered to see what it is. I know WHAT FICO is, but I've always paid my bills and never checked my score. I know there is a lot more that goes into the score, but I've simply never given it any thought. I've always handled Lynn's finances as well as mine and I pay all the bills ... by that, I mean "physically" pay them ... we have a joint bank account.

I guess what I'm wondering is what makes the difference here? ALL of my bills get paid on time. ALL of Lynn's bills get paid on time. ALL of the debts are in MY name except her car payment/insurance. Mortgage, utilities, ALL credit cards ... everything is in my name. With me on Social Security, our income is pretty much the same (which isn't much!). With all of my debt and low income ... and her minimal debt with matching income, it seems to me, I'd be the bigger credit risk.

What got me wondering is when we traded her car a couple months ago, my salesman told us her FICO score was 818, so there'd be no problem with a decent loan.

This morning I got an eMail from American Express reminding me I could check my FICO score with them at any time, free of charge (and the "check" does not go against the credit report). So, for shits & grins, I decided to check it out. Here's the return:

Your FICO® Score as of September 23rd - 850

Ok, what does 850 mean? I looked it up.

"FICO scores range from 300 to 850, where 850 is considered to be the best score achievable. According to myFICO.com, a division of the Fair Issac Corporation, only 13% of the U.S. population has a FICO score greater then 800, while only 2% has a FICO score lower then 500. The largest proportion of the population, 27%, has a FICO score between 750 and 800.

My question is, why would my score be higher than hers? All things seem equal, EXCEPT I have higher debt. Wouldn't that mean she's a lower credit risk compared to me? How does this FICO thing work? I guess it sounds silly that I've never paid one bit of attention to it in all of my 63 years! I just always knew I'd never done anything to f-up my credit, so I never worried about it.

[Chicken Dinner]

I get it for free every month from a couple of credit cards the Mrs. and I have. (USAA is one of them if you're a member.) So, I see it every month, but don't really track it. I'm no expert, but there is a lot more to it than totally debt. They look at the number of cards, the length of time you've had the cards, and the utilization (percentage of outstanding debt to card balances) in addition to payment history and recent inquiries. And, probably a whole lot more. If you're both over 800 I wouldn't worry about it too much either. I

[Arty]

CD is pretty much right on.

The FICO score however has nothing to do with your income, meaning you could have no job/income at all and it wouldn't lower or raise your score.

In your examples, probably the biggest difference in the scores is that YOU have more out there for them to "grade" you on.

Less open accounts and history typically means lower score.

However, at 818 and 850 it's splitting frog hairs, since both are extremely high.

[Thumper]

That may be it then ... ALL credit cards are in my name. She has secondary cards in her name, but I'm the primary account holder. The mortgage is in my name, but she's included on the deed (in case anything happens to me). Cell phones, etc, same deal. That makes sense I suppose ... I have a bazillion debts and she has zilch. I guess there ain't nuttin' to worry about then, I just thought it odd a person with a ton of debt would have better credit than someone with very little. Seems bassackwards to me.

[Arty]

In the words of Dave Ramsey... FICO SCORE is an "I love debt" score.
Meaning no debt (no open accounts) typically means lower FICO.

It is ass backwards in a way isn't it ?

[LJ3]

I watch mine pretty closely. I have a service thru USAA that pulls monthly reports from all 3 agencies.Having completely screwed up my credit in my 20's, I learned the importance of taking care of that bad boy :)

plus with my service you can alert on people trying to get credit in my name, step 1 of identity theft.

But yeah, what everyone else has said. If you're in the 800's you're golden.

[jb]

Just looked it up for the first time 830, only debt shown is the pole barn we're buying, other than that no other mortgage, cars or camper loans. CC are paid off monthly.
Looks like I need more debt to be perfect.
My wife has her CC's, a savings and checking account and had a car loan we'd paid off early. When she bought her new car I wanted the loan taken out in her name to give her some more credit history. CU would not give her a loan without my co-signing, she had no Credit Score, so we just ended up putting it in my name and paying it off.
Makes no sense.

[LJ3]

Yeah, there's actually an art to finding a sweet spot of credit card balance. There's a magical percentage that seems to change.

The wife's actually took a big hit when we bought our current house because her name wasn't on the mortgage. That's some silly shit right there.

At the end of the day I think the biggest drivers are your credit to debt ratio and making sure all your shit is paid on time.

[Thumper]

Bubba, when Lynn and I first got together, she had no credit. She always paid cash for everything. When she bought her BMW, she paid through the nose because she had no credit established. I started signing her up for every credit card under the sun and we'd just use them for small purchases ... kind of spread out some of our purchases among a handful of cards, then pay them off every month. I did that to establish credit for her.

When we moved to Florida in 1989, I put ALL the debts in my name. My reasoning was, I was starting a new business from the ground up and wasn't sure how things would work out. If my business failed and I had to file bankruptcy, I figured I'd take all our debt with me instead of dumping it in her lap. My business thrived and did well, but we just never changed the way our finances were set up. We've now been together over 30 years and everything is still in my name. It's not like she has bad credit ... I've always had a rule, we pay our bills first, then if there's anything left over, we eat! It's just the way I am. I'm now wondering if maybe I should put a few bills (probably credit cards) in her name (as the primary card holder) and continue on just to edge her score up a bit. It seems silly the way this credit thing works. If you don't owe anybody, your score drops! Kinda silly IMO. I'd like to see BOTH of us with an 850 score if possible. Not really sure it would help anything, I'm just wondering if it would help her any if something should happen to me. When you get older, you start thinking about things like that. It's kinda crazy ... through the years I was adamant about keeping our credit CLEAN, but never once paid a bit of attention to what our FICO score was ... or is.

[Thumper]

Ticboy, talk about silliness. Lynn has always gotten a discount on her car insurance because I have the house insured with Allstate. We both have our cars insured with Allstate also. They give us both a homeowner's discount on our auto insurance policies. It's been that way for 30 frigging years. Now, just a few months ago, they did some sort of audit and cancelled her discount because her name is not on the mortgage! Since she's not "really" a homeowner, she's not eligible for a discount! I went to the bank that carries my mortgage to see what I had to do to get her name added, and what I basically had to do was to refinance to add her name. Heck, with the points, etc ... it just wasn't worth it. I have a buddy who's an attorney and he checked with his real estate department and they told him how to handle it. He drew up the legal papers to add her name to the deed for "no consideration". I simply took the papers to the courthouse to have them registered (paid a $32.00 fee) and the deed (no pun intended) was done. Of course it was a big help that he's a good buddy of mine and didn't charge me anything.

You may want to look into something like that. I have no clue if that actually affects her credit or not ... her name is on the deed, but I don't know if she has any responsibility as far as the mortgage is concerned. The main thing it accomplishes is, if anything happens to me, it smooths out the transfer of title even though she gets everything I own anyway according to my will. It simply smooths out a few bumps for her.

[Arty]

Ticboy, talk about silliness. Lynn has always gotten a discount on her car insurance because I have the house insured with Allstate. We both have our cars insured with Allstate also. They give us both a homeowner's discount on our auto insurance policies. It's been that way for 30 frigging years. Now, just a few months ago, they did some sort of audit and cancelled her discount because her name is not on the mortgage! Since she's not "really" a homeowner, she's not eligible for a discount! I went to the bank that carries my mortgage to see what I had to do to get her name added, and what I basically had to do was to refinance to add her name. Heck, with the points, etc ... it just wasn't worth it. I have a buddy who's an attorney and he checked with his real estate department and they told him how to handle it. He drew up the legal papers to add her name to the deed for "no consideration". I simply took the papers to the courthouse to have them registered (paid a $32.00 fee) and the deed (no pun intended) was done. Of course it was a big help that he's a good buddy of mine and didn't charge me anything. You may want to look into something like that. I have no clue if that actually affects her credit or not ... her name is on the deed, but I don't know if she has any responsibility as far as the mortgage is concerned. The main thing it accomplishes is, if anything happens to me, it smooths out the transfer of title even though she gets everything I own anyway according to my will. It simply smooths out a few bumps for her.

That would get her on the deed of the house, but it wouldn't add her to the mortgage.
So it wouldn't help the credit. But it would / should help with things like insurance.

[Thumper]

That's what I figured Arty ... I just wasn't positive. The bottom line is, it accomplished what I set out to do and didn't really cost us anything ... but WILL save us some money. Not to mention solidifying her stake in the house if I should croak. ;)