I like to check my credit report (for free) throughout the year – so I review one credit bureau at a time through www.annualcreditreport.com. This time I chose Experian. Everything looked fine, but while I was at it I spent $7.50 to see my “Vantage Score”. It bugs me that you have to pay for a score that is not really even your actual score – as consumers we should be able to see the data , including our score for free. Now that I am done with my rant, my VantageScore was 870 based on a scale of 501-990. According to their records, this is better than 79.5% of U.S. Consumers. Not bad. This puts me in what they called Prime Plus: the categories from worst to best are – High Risk, Non-Prime, Prime, Prime Plus, Super Prime.
The factors that lowered my score were:
- average loan amount of my real estate account is too low (which is true since I just refinanced last year!)
- the balance amount paid down across my real estate account is too low-paying down the balance will have a positive impact (no kidding! – but again, I just refinanced last year)
- the ratio of balances-to-credit-limits on my credit card accounts is too high (I pay them off in full every month, but I guess I could ask for a credit limit increase)
So, after paying my $7.50 for my “fake” credit score, I then received an offer from American Express (I have a credit card with them for Costco) for a free credit score! This too was from Experian but it was their PLUS Score. My score on this was 793 on a 330-830 scale. My credit category on this was Excellent, with the categories being – Very Poor, Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent. On this report, they again listed the factors that could lower your PLUS score. My report said and I quote: “Currently, your credit report does not show any significant negative or derogatory information.”
So two scores from the same company, one better than the other! Basically though, my credit is great. If anything, I could try to raise the limits on my credit card which may boost my score a little bit. The big thing is that I am paying extra each month on the mortgage, so that will also improve my score over time.
