by Ashley
First thing’s first. Welcome, Amy! I’m so excited to have another blogger up in the mix! I was a reader long before I was a contributor here so I’m super pumped to be able to follow another blogger on their debt journey! Yay!!! I can’t wait to get to “know” Amy as we share this debt-reduction journey together!
(Side Note: I’ve also seen many people ask about Hope in recent comments. I don’t have any updates, but I’ll send her a quick email today just to pass along our warm thoughts and kind regards. I honestly don’t have any additional information at this time but I wanted to address it because I know lots of have asked about her recently).
I hope all our American readers had a lovely Thanksgiving this past week! It was JUST what I needed! Quiet, low-key, relaxing, etc. We spent a solid 3 days in a row at home (we had friends over for play dates on Friday & Saturday so we weren’t all alone), and it was GLORIOUS to just hang out and relax. This was our first Thanksgiving in a very long time where we were just at home – we didn’t go anywhere and we didn’t have any guests here, either. I used it as an excuse to go super easy for Thanksgiving. We just had meat, 2 sides, and a single dessert. That’s it. I have to admit that I kind of missed not having a ton of Thanksgiving leftovers (my favorite is a thanksgiving sandwich with cranberry sauce, stuffing, and turkey – but we didn’t even do ANY of those foods this year! Our main was ham and our sides were green beans & sweet potato casserole). We did buy a mini (2 lb) butterball turkey that I’ll probably cook sometime this week, but hubs had specifically requested ham for our main meat for Thanksgiving so that’s what we had.
And then I applied for a student loan consolidation….and I was DENIED!!!!!
I couldn’t even believe it.
According to Credit Karma, my credit is in the “excellent” range. They have my credit at a 760 or 785, depending on the site (Equifax & Transunion, respectively).
What possible reason would they have for denying me a line of credit?
An outstanding collection.
That’s what they said. The thing is, I’ve literally only had one “derogatory” mark on my credit in my life. It was from when I was 18 or 19 (nearly 15 years ago now) for not paying for those 10 DVD’s for 1 penny thing (mine was via Columbia House, but surely you’re familiar with those programs – there were several in that time-frame). It was a legitimate debt that I owed and, funny thing is, I even tried to pay for it a few years after-the-fact, but I couldn’t get the creditor to send me a letter stating that the debt would be settled in full after payment, so I never sent the payment. It aged until it fell off my credit and I haven’t even thought about it in years.
According to Credit Karma, I have no derogatory marks/late payments/etc (like I said, due to its age, this one negative mark long-ago fell off my credit report). I’m telling you, I’m kind of a stellar client from a lender’s perspective. I’m conscientious, pay on time, more than the minimum, etc. etc. Plus the lender who denied me also had me link my different bank accounts so they could see that I had lots of assets available (not only from my EF, but also my retirement, and I’m listed as a joint account holder on my Dad’s account, too, so although I don’t consider his money “mine”, its a lot of additional liquid assets that are mine from a legal perspective since it’s a joint account). Soooo…what the heck? I don’t get it. But that’s that.
So this lender is out. I still have other options, but I was just shocked about this denial. Truly, genuinely shocked.
Have you ever been caught off-guard about an unexpected credit denial?
How did you spend your Thanksgiving holiday? What’s your favorite Thanksgiving food?
Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
I am a physician- and I was refinancing private loans through physician targeted loan companies, I was shocked to get denied from several despite 700+ credit, 10+ years credit history, etc .because of my “high debt to income ratio” DUH I have a lot of debt… I was a professional student for 10+ years!
That’s ridiculous! Especially if the company targets physicians they should know that most are going to have a large amount of debt coming out of school!
Could the denial been related to the recent mortgage? You may need some time for lenders to approve a new debt.
I don’t think so. They have to give a reason for the denial and they said it was due to an outstanding collection. Plus, the loan was this same month so I don’t think it’s even shown up on my credit yet because I think it takes a month for it to appear (could be wrong, but that’s my understanding).
Make sure to ask for your credit report since you were debited and make sure there is no collection on there. They may be using a different credit bureau than what Credit Karma uses.
This is a good idea. There shouldn’t be anything else – this has been my only “collection” in my life. When I first started blogging our credit wasn’t great due to having such a high debt-to-credit ratio, but as we’ve paid down our debts our scores have increased.
About two years ago I got turned down for a credit card from the credit union I had been with for over 20 years. I was totally shocked because my credit score was 750+ from the official myFICO.com site. I ended up applying for the Citibank double cash card and was approved instantly with the best rate they had to offer!
my understanding is because you’ve been turned down for a loan because of something that’s on your credit report, you are entitled to a FREE copy of your credit report from whatever borough the loan company used ( even if you’ve already got a credit report this year). I would get that before applying for another consolidation just to make sure that everything’s OK
Good tip, thank you!!
Did you get a copy of your credit report when you applied for your mortgage?
No…should I have???
I think so? Maybe it’s a bank by bank thing? I’ve always received a paper copy in the mail with my mortgages/refinances. Maybe it’s tucked away in the epic stack of mortgage-related docs? (At least mine was epic…so much paper)
I know which lender you’re talking about, and I feel your pain. I too, was rejected for “insufficient savings” despite having a healthy EF, retirement accounts, investment account. So I don’t get it either. They are very picky in who they choose, and while it’s frustrating, there’s other lenders out there.
Ugh! Good to know I’m not alone (misery loves company, heh). I won’t let it get me down. : )
I’m sorry about that! If it makes you feel better I tried SoFI originally and was denied by them. This is why I had to go explore further and went with Earnest in the long run…. So just try them all out until you get one that works for you!
You really should pull your credit reports from all three reporting agencies–you are entitled to do so for free once per year, and you should make it a habit to do so. I absolutely believe that you have no outstanding collection, but errors in the reporting agencies are quite common, and with all your issues with Navient, I wouldn’t be surprised if they misreported something…
You can pull them for free from annualcreditreport.com
Good point. When I first started blogging I did this religiously (I’d do it once every 4 months and rotate which credit agency I would look at so they were all pulled once per year). I really need to do it again to check things out. I can also call this student loan consolidation lender and ask them more specifics about which agency they were using. I’ve used Credit Karma (which I know isn’t official…), so I don’t anticipate any surprises, but I just have no idea what this negative mark could be about. I almost feel like it might be an error with the student loan consolidation company. But it’s definitely worth checking my credit report to make sure there aren’t errors there, too.
I also know several people who had to apply to a few companies before succeeding in refinancing a large amount of student debt. Do pull your credit reports, but don’t let it discourage you from trying again with someone else.
+1 to this!