Yup, easy $75. And hopefully Amazon Payments count again like it did last year. I'm going to play it safe and just do that next month, after others report if it works still.

So I'm going to applying for a mortgage shortly. My mortgage guy last year told me that any available credit (even if its not used) counts against the total amount the bank will lend me for the mortgage. If I could qualify for 400k, but had 30k in available credit on CCs, they would only lend me 370k etc. Now the first 2-3 pages of this thread advocate for having as many cards with as high limits as possible to raise the rating/lower utilization at no cost to anything else.

So who's full of **** here? I'm in Ontario, Canada fwiw.

Goose, I'm not sure, and especially about Canada, but the advice given has been to increase your score so you can get a better interest rate, which is most important anyway.

An unrelated possible warning:

Every couple of months since building my credit, I've done a round of applying for new cards on the same day, based on the "trick" of applying for multiple cards on the same day, since the other credit companies supposedly wouldn't see the other hard credit report pulls yet.

Each time, I've been accepted on the first application of that day, and rejected on every one after that, leading me to believe this "trick" doesn't work. No big deal really, but there's no need to hurt your score with a lot of hard pulls. I'd just advise applying for one credit line you really want every few months.

Never heard of this. As long as the loan is secured (loan to value ratio < 0.8), your available credit to amount used is a positive influence on your credit score. On my recent refi, we got dinged for having one account (our Southwest CC) with too high a balance, despite paying it off every month. So I plan to ask for a credit line increase on that account.

Its always worked for me and I can't see how a lender would be able to tell in real time that you just applied for credit at a different lender 5 minutes prior.

Have you called the reconsideration lines to find out why you were denied? What does the denial mailer say?

I don't know man. It seems like it's real time.

it's very common for accounts to report to the CRAs mid billing cycle. Find out the exact date it reports and pay online a couple days before. Boom, zero utilization

You're right that they can show up in real time. Your denials are probably more of a coincidence though. If you have decent credit 1 INQ should'nt be a deal breaker. not to mention that most of these pulls are only hitting 1 bureau.

Fair enough. I've only been building credit for about a year and don't have great credit yet. Creditsesame and karma say 735. I have enough good cards now anyway so I'll let the hard pulls fall off and it should go up.

saw this today, it's a good summary:

http://travelisfree.com/2013/10/08/h...-credit-score/

I had an old unpaid utility bill of $60 that I didn't realize had gone to collections. I moved a few months ago and needed to get the power turned on at my new address, and the power company charged me this $60 in addition to the normal deposits/hookup fees. I just pulled my TransUnion report and the $60 is still on there, from a collection agency called ONLINE INFORMATION SVCS out of Winterville, NC. Is there anything I can do to get it removed? I assume the collection agency isn't going to take my word for it that the power company collected this.

I have some debts that went into collections years ago. Eventually the companies stopped calling me when they realized I wasn't going to pay. How do I find out exactly what and who I owe, how to get into contact with them, and am I still eligible for pay for delete?

I had a car that was repoed. Got the loan in April 2008, was repoed July 2010. How long will this stay on credit?

I think general rule is bad items report for 7 years.

Although he actually gives pretty good information in that article, I realized that he doesn't know that much about credit when he wrote I don't know if you mentioned it earlier itt, but everyone can check their score once per year for free via https://www.annualcreditreport.com without having to sign up for any trials or anything else.

Just cleared the Starwoods AMEX signup bonus for 30k miles. Will be closing when annual fee hits.

Now on to the Chase Sapphire Preferred. Will probably only have this for a year and then downgrade to the regular Sapphire as I already have the Freedom.

Still have my Citi AA (was thinking of cancelling but they waived the annual fee, will probably downgrade next year) and CapOne Ventures Reward (2x points).

After the CSP, will be taking a break for a year or so, will have opened 4 cards this year: Ink Bold/Freedom/Starwoods AMEX/CSP.

Actually, you can check your credit report once a year, but that doesn't include your credit score. So you'll find out if, for instance, some funky unpaid utility bill shows up. But you won't see how much damage that old bill did, or where your score is now. So the article was correct.

Go to www.annualcreditreport.com and fill out some personal info. You can do this once per year for absolutely free by just filling it out. When finished, make sure to write down the report number so you can log back in and check this report at any time. It won't be an updated report, but at least it will be an easy way to check back on info or items that you forget.

Once completed, look at the Potentially Negative Items section (might be named slightly different, but that's what it is on the Experian site). This should provide you with the lender name, address, and your account number. Hopefully it will also include a phone number you can call.
Yup, 7 years is what I've read.

Yup this. Credit Score != Credit Report.

If you want to check your Credit Score, you can go to MyFICO.com and pay $15 to see what it is. I actually just checked and you can sign up for a 10 day trial, input your info, get your FICO score from one of the three credit unions for free. The catch is you have to cancel the subscription to their ScoreWatch service within 10 days or you get hit for that $14.95 fee.

Another free option is to register for CreditKarma.com and fill out some info there. I'm in the process of rebuilding my credit after some silly mistakes I made, but CreditKarma has my score at 624, while MyFICO's Equifax score shows me at 662. Just wanted to include that data point so you don't take CreditKarma's score as an absolute.

Whoops, my fault. Thanks for the correction.

I'm a big fan of CreditKarma. What you should understand though is it is owned by and based off of Transunion data. Therefore it should be very close to your Transunion score, but not exact when it comes to Equifax or Experian.

I have city identity monitor for $5 a month that lets me pull my reports ad scores whenever I want as well as monitors new entries and activity. I've had it for over a year but last week or so I think I saw a thread on slickdeals that the $5 offer is back

Alright I'm finally at the point in my life where I should start thinking about credit, I went through some dumb kid stuff around 5 years ago that will hopefully be off my account by the time I'm doing any large purchases but I just remembered something and am looking for advice before I pay it off.

About 4 years ago I got into a scuffle with some bouncers and ended up in the hospital overnight in police custody. I was broke and hospital wanted money, I ignored it and it went into collections it was around $2500(in hindsight I should have just used the poor people systems in place but I was a dumb kid and didn't know any better than ignore). It's now only $545 has no interest and I have enough money to pay it all at once though I don't want to unless it is my best option. I am fairly certain there are laws about the police being responsible for my bill since I was in custody but I have no idea how I would go about that (Ohio) and if it's even an option this late in the game. So my question is what is my best next step? These are the options I am thinking about though I'm unsure of their plausibility.

A) Somehow get Police to pay the bill and assume responsibility for it. Getting it off my credit report. (If someone has any idea how this works)
B) Contact original hospital and pay them some amount to get rid of this?
C) Agree to pay the collector in exchange for getting it off my account. Don't know if I can negotiate less.

I am clearly very ignorant on this issue but would love any information you can give me. Thank you.

1) forget the hospital, they sold the debt and have nothing to do with it at this point. They can't even legally accept payment.

2) Uhh, the cops aren't paying, or somehow fixing your credit even if they did. Blindly disputing online has a better chance than anything down this path.

3) Did you set up a payment plan with a collector? If so you reset the sol and 7 year reporting clock with every payment, nice work. If not I think the best course of action would be to just let it go, as in wait for it to age off your reports, or do some real research if you want to do it right. A pay for delete with the collector might be worth looking into, but with this already being 4 years old (and you having other dings from around this time) doing nothing is probably your best, cheapest, and easiest bet.

Yeah I thought about disputing just for lols. No I didn't set up any payment plans. My only thought with the collectors was to pay for delete.

I have a question. I just checked my credit for the first time and it's 700. As far as I can tell, my FICO score is mainly derived from info recieved on my car payments, utilities and some bull**** Macys card I was swindled into when I was 18 and haven't given a single thought to since. I have never had a credit card nor really had any use for one but it would be nice to have something in case of an emergency. Would I be better off just establishing a line of credit with my bank?

Most of the rewards programs seem to emphasize frequent flier miles which (on account of my line of employment) would be largely useless. I'd like to raise my score since in the future I plan to buy a house (I am 22 right now). Sorry if these questions are puerile I really am a bit clueless.