Following my guest post on my good friend JD’s Get Rich Slowly about How to Prepare for Buying a Home, I was contacted by a PR firm asking whether I’d be interested in talking with Barry Paperno, consumer operations manager at Fair Isaac. Fair Isaac is most well know for developing the FICO score, otherwise known as your credit score, which is probably one of the the most important numbers you need to know prior to getting a mortgage. Since it was relevant, I shot over five questions for Mr. Paperno and he was kind enough to answer them (I’m emphasized parts of his answers that I feel are valuable).

Summary

The main takeaways that I got from interviewing Barry was that the majority of your score is determined by sound credit management - pay on-time, don’t get too extended, simply be responsible. However, at the edges, such as getting your score that extra ten points, depends on optimizing some of your decisions. For example, one of the more recently popular credit tips involving not canceling unused cards, a tip Barry mentioned. Keeping them open means your utilization is lower (which is good) and runs counter to the advice even the professionals would give.

Another idea, one that is intuitively obvious but often overlooked, is the fact that you could have mistakes on your report and those mistakes take up to thirty days to correct. If you need a loan within thirty days, it could be using a score that reflects inaccurate or incorrect information. This makes sense to people, it’s simply a matter of remembering it!

Remember, you get a free copy of your credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com from each of the credit bureaus every single year. It won’t include a score but it will include your history, which you can verify as correct. If you want your score, many hardcore credit score watchers from the likes of CreditBoards.com (quite possibly the most popular credit related forum with nearly 75,000 members) really like myFICO.com.

If you have a student loan from Sallie Mae and recently opted for graduated or extended repayment plans, Sallie Mae probably reported your recent loan payment as a partial payment to Equifax and they marked it as delinquent. If all that happened, your Equifax credit score, one of the most important numbers of your adult life, took a big hit as a result of that reporting error (or “glitch,” as they would say) by Sallie Mae. Sallie Mae, based out of Reston, Virginia, happens to be the largest student lender in the United States and this mistake has caused a significant drop in credit scores, as many as a hundred points!

What happened was that Sallie Mae had offered a special payment payment plan (graduated or extended repayment plans) and accidentally reported those payment plans as partial payments to Equifax. Equifax, in seeing only “partial payments,” coded the accounts as delinquent. If you have any student loans, you probably recognize that they’re probably one of the largest debts you have and getting it marked delinquent is bad. Sallie Mae and Equifax discovered this last Friday and the problem was fixed by Tuesday, though approximately 10% of the 10 million Sallie Mae customers were ensnared by this coding snafu and saw their scores decline (according to their spokesperson).

Were you affected? No, unless you did two things. First, do you have a loan with Sallie Mae? If so, did you agree for a “graduated or extended repayment plan?” A graduated or extended repayment plans was an arrangement where you can stretch the typical 10 year payment period over 12 to 30 years, with smaller payments in the beginning.

Does this matter? No, unless you are planning on getting a loan in the next few weeks. I stand corrected, this will matter if an existing loan sees you delinquent on a loan and then jacks up your rates (smells like Universal Default clauses on credit cards), but outside that scenario you’re probably safe. If you don’t plan on borrowing money for a house or a car or anything else for a few weeks, I wouldn’t worry about it because your score will go back to normal once they sort things out.

What to do if your score fell and you need a loan? No problem, you can call up Sallie Mae at (888) 2-SALLIE and request a credit reference letter to indicate that the delinquent account is Sallie Mae’s fault and not your borrowers. You can take that letter to the lender and notify them that your account simply has a problem in it. You won’t need to pull your Equifax report and request a fix or anything, they’re working on it.

This underscores the importance of monitoring your credit history at all times, though they caught this particular error pretty quickly. Some people use myFICO to monitor their credit report (since it monitors your Equifax report, they saw it immediately) but I’m not sure it’s worth $89.95 a year or $8.95 a month. Do I really need my FICO score monitored on a weekly basis? I don’t know. Either way, the service is available or you could just rely on the one a year availability of free credit reports via AnnualCreditReport.com.

(Photo by Kato von Kiwi)

When you’re young, have little or no income, and want to build a credit history, it’s really difficult. The current credit environment has made it much more difficult so here are a few methods I’ve used, or have seen recommended, in the past in order to build your credit history.

One tip that has been removed from lists like these is the Authorized User tip. In the past, a parent could add a child onto one of their accounts as an authorized user and the child would see credit history benefits. Many people took advantage of that by “renting” out these authorized user slots and so FICO responded by cutting that link. Now, it appears, that authorized users have no bearing. This is the case of people trying to subvert the system for profit and the system, rightfully, punishing everyone. You can read more about the whole authorized user practice here.

Store-Branded Credit Cards

Stores love to push their store branded credit cards because the bean-counters know that people spend more on credit than they do with cash. Those same bean-counters also know that less than 100% of store branded credit card holders will pay off the bill in full, so the store can develop another revenue stream by offering a store branded card. Their greed is your benefit because they are willing to extend a little bit of credit to people with no history. One of my first credit cards was from American Eagle Outfitters (it was a cool looking card with half of it being transparent/clear) with a piddly little $500 limit. The size of the limit was irrelevant, I merely wanted another line of credit on my nascent credit report to help build it out.

College Signup Tables

Many people have written many articles about how those credit card peddlers on college campuses will be the downfall of humanity but those peddlers gave me my very first credit card, an AT&T Universal Card, and sent me on my way to building my credit history. They also gave me a t-shirt, which extended the time between laundry room visits! On the credit card application, the guy told me to put my income as my college tuition, which may have been disingenuous, and I was approved a few weeks later.

I believe many college campuses have made this illegal, but you can still see these types of tables at sports arenas, airports, and other high traffic areas. In fact, given the stories I’ve read about these tables potentially stealing identity information (can you really trust a random guy who just set up a plastic table?), I’d be more trusting of tables at sports arenas and airports because they are vetted. For example, you know the person behind the Southwest table at the airport is a Southwest employee… otherwise they would’ve been booted by now.

Co-sign A Loan

Even though the authorized user hack has been made moot, you can still have the no credit history person co-sign a loan with a good credit history person. A prime example of this is a car loan, where the bank won’t approve the loan unless someone with good credit is willing to vouch for the no credit person and put themselves on the hook in the event of non-payment. This isn’t a tactic that one would generally use as a means of building credit, though I suppose a child could always piggyback on a loan ultimately designed for the parent, but it’s certainly a way to get a revolving account on one’s history. An account like this one, large balance with a history of on-time payment, is exactly what lenders and credit bureaus like to see. Oftentimes though, this co-signing is out of necessity.

AnnualCreditReport.com

You can get a copy of your credit report from each of the credit bureaus each year, meaning you can get three total (TransUnion, Experian, Equifax). This is a good practice regardless of how good, bad, or non-existent your credit history may be. Keeping tabs on your score and the accuracy of your report is paramount. AnnualCreditReport.com is a program run by the government, don’t go anywhere else for a free copy of your report (they will provide no actual “score” though).

Does anyone have any good tips to help someone starting out with no credit history?

Ever wonder what dings up that you credit score? Credit bureaus don’t give out the equation they use to figure your FICO score but through varying sources such as mortgage agents, credit card schemers, and folks who just keep an eye out on their credit score and see how it reacts to their behavior; we’ve gleaned a few tidbits that will teach you how your score is derived.

First things first, after you request your credit score you’ll actually get three of them: a FICO II Score, a New EMPIRICA Score, and a BEACON Score. They correspond to the three credit bureaus and their scoring equations:

• Empirica Score credit score = Transunion credit bureau score
• Beacon Score credit score = Equifax credit bureau score
• Fair Issac / FICO Score = Experian credit bureau score

Hard Inquiries Vs. Soft Inquiries: Whenever you request credit (apply for a new credit card, try to get a mortgage or car loan, etc.), the institution extending you credit will want to get your score and assess your history in terms of risk. High score means safe and safe means low interest rate. They will pull a ‘hard inquiry’ that is recorded on your history and is ‘negative.’ A lot of hard inquiries means either you’re cavalier towards applying for credit or you’re trying to get a lot of credit very quickly, both cases are bad. A soft inquiry is the result of an informal look at your history, typically when you view your own credit or if someone else takes a peek. These aren’t as bad because they don’t mean that you’re looking for credit, it just means you or someone else just wants to know about your history to perhaps send you an offer. You can opt out of soft inquiries by telling each of the big three bureaus.

Lines of Credit History: History is only good if it’s old, we’re talking minimum 3+ years. Knowing you’ve been current on loans for three years is more meaningful than knowing you’ve been current for three months. Usually credit card companies won’t even give notice of late payment unless you’re 60 to 90 days late, that’s because they know someones people miss payments by accident.

Percent Utilization: “Keep it under 25%” is the maxim you should follow but if you let it slide to 50%, it’s not as bad as hitting 70%. If you have $10,000 of credit, keep your percent used under $5,000 or it looks like you’re in trouble. This is why requesting increases in your line of credit is key because it will decrease your utilization without dinging your history with a hard inquiry.

Types of Credit: Most college graduates will have large college loans outstanding, which appear on the record, and institutions know it. If you have a high utilization but it is predominately college loans, they’re typically okay with it so it won’t negatively impact your score as badly as if it were credit card debt. Part of the reason is the relatively low interest rate when you consider some people are paying over 25% interest on credit card debt.

Bottom Line: When making a financial decision, don’t base it on how it will affect your score, make it based on how it will affect your wallet/pocketbook but keeping in mind that your score may be affected. It’s like doing something for the tax break, it’s not worth it. Pay off your credit card debt because of the astronomical interest rate and don’t make that extra mortgage payment in lieu of it. And always stay current.

Update: (2/24) Added the three types of scores and which bureau they correspond to.