Blogging Away Debt Our Journeys to a Debt-Free Life

by Tricia

I haven’t really been on the ball this week.  I’m fighting a nasty sore throat and I’ve finally just recovered from a leg injury from last weekend.  I finally got around to paying some debt last night (to my Prosper Lenders, you’ll be happy to know I initiated my Prosper payment ;)) and probably later tonight I’ll update my debt tally after I pay one of my credit cards.

I’ve been so out of the loop that I just realized it’s Friday!  Time to highlight a blog and I can’t forget to do that!! 

This week, I’m highlighting another personal finance blog.  It’s one that is very well respected in the community and actually just highlighted my blog a few weeks ago. 

There’s a post that is a great reference for everyone: How to Personal Finance Edition.  He received entries from bloggers and posted them all right there in one spot.  He always has great ideas like that.

There’s also some calculators that the author, JLP, made himself.  I especially like The Power of Starting Young.  It’s too late for me, but there’s still time to help my son along.

JLP actually discusses some things that are over my head at this point (addition: not in a bad way though, I just seem to have debt tunnel vision).  But I’m finding that by reading blogs I’m processing new information better than with a textbook.  Perhaps because it isn’t so intimidating coming from a blogger.

Anyways, AllFinancialMatters has been around quite a while and there’s some great reading over there.   🙂

by Tricia

I received my quarterly FICO score through myfico.com over a week ago. Unfortunately, the FICO score is just from one of the three credit reporting agencies (TransUnion, Experian & Equifax). I decided to pay the extra money to see all three at once since I have never done it before.

Here’s what I saw.

Back in May, my TransUnion FICO score was 732. Since then, I’ve paid off a bit more of my debt and I was pleased to see it raise to 742.

TransUnion also had some very nice positives about me since I haven’t had any late payments and I’ve had credit lines over 10 years. They still don’t like how much debt I have, but I expect that negative to be there for a while.

TransUnion

Can anyone explain why I have a positive for the length of my credit history yet a negative for the length of time with my revolving accounts? Especially since my credit history started with a revolving account?

I’m scratching my head on that one, but let’s move on.

Here’s the positive/negative information for the highest score I received from Equifax.

Equifax

Equifax is showing me some love because they say I have a low proportion of debt to credit limits on my credit cards (33%). So perhaps that is the magical percentage to be under – eureka!!

Wait…but TransUnion gave me a negative there so why is there a difference? I thought perhaps the debt balances were showing different but they aren’t. They even give the same exact percentage of 33%.

I’m still scratching my head. The only thing I can think of is the fact that Equifax says the average proportion is 40% and TransUnion says 36%.

Now, Experian gave me the lowest score of them all. They didn’t list any positives 🙁

Experian

The biggest difference with my Experian report is that my Prosper loan is only reported to their agency. Therefore, Prosper shows as an inquiry as does the last credit card that I obtained (to do a balance transfer). With only 2 recent inquiries, they put that as a negative. Ouch.

I suppose if Prosper reported to the other two agencies as well, I would have taken a hit on all three scores. I really wish I pulled my Experian score before my Prosper loan was reported because I could do more comparisons.

I feel that one of the biggest problems with a FICO score is that it is just a snapshot in time. As far as I know (and someone please correct me if I am wrong), you cannot go back at a certain point in time and look at your FICO score. The only way you could know is if on that day in time you paid for your score and you kept it on file for future reference.

Overall, reviewing all three FICO scores at once leaves me feeling like my score is somewhat of a crap shoot. You never know if all of your creditors will report to all three agencies and if you apply for a mortgage what agency will the company pull your credit report from? And then the information they give as to the positive and negatives? Your credit history is long enough…your revolving credit history isn’t long enough…you’ve opened a new account recently…AAAAHHH!

Seriously – that’s how I feel. It makes my head spin trying to figure out what they want me to do to increase my credit score.

I’m not bothering to pull all three scores ever again. I probably shouldn’t have done it this month since things were going to be tight but I was just too curious. I also pulled another score (which I thought was a FICO score but wasn’t) and I’ll post about that one later. I think I will just stick with the one I get with my yearly subscription and that’s it. It just boggles my mind on how they come up with the scores so I’m just gonna continue paying my bills on time and paying down my debt.