November 22nd, 2006 5:06 pm
My True Credit Score / FICO Score
I listened to you guys from last post on my credit score and tried a couple of other credit score services: MyFico.com and Experian.com.
I think TrueCredit.com service I used to look up my credit score before is either inaccurate or lagging. They are definitely not living up to their name. The three credit scores are way too high considering that I am in foreclosure and delinquent on most of my accounts. So I cancelled the service, saving me $9.95/mo.
I like these guys better. The first one, MyFico.com gave me my Equifax score. The second is my Experian score. I took advantage of the free trial, though you can pay a little extra and see all three scores. This is a much more realistic credit score picture:
All this FICO score and credit score can be confusing. It was helpful for me to learn more about FICO score here and read up Wikipedia’s Credit Score article.
I’m still confused. There are so many different scoring models and methods, its mind boggling. It’s amazing how we all call it a “FICO” score but there are different results based on weather a consumer is pulling their credit score versus a mortgage brokers, etc. I’m still trying to make sense of this whole credit score / FICO score mess.
By the way, your comments on the last post about my high credit score have been helpful. Thanks!
Update: I remembered that my Washington Mutual (formally Providian) credit card gives me a free TransUnion score and even has a cool little chart. Check it out:
So my three scores are: Equifax 459, Experian 514, TransUnion 490. I wonder if things can get any worse…
63 Comments
November 22nd, 2006 at 5:11 pm
that says you have no public records. does that mean they don’t know about the foreclosure yet? also, it only lists about 50k in unsecured debt. i thought you had 200k?
November 22nd, 2006 at 5:27 pm
The last time I checked, truecredit seemed to be the best for the price. It gives your real-time credit report, changes to your credit, and a score, but what you said makes sence; it’s not a score calculated by fico.
What do others think is the best credit monitoring service value?
November 22nd, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Casey,
This is all well and good, but even after you sell these properties or have them repossessed, you will still have to pay back the couple hundred grand you are out … and still need to afford to live.
How do you propose you would structure paying back 200k and the daily necessities as nobody is likely to extend you credit? Facing forclosure seems to be the least of your troubles.
November 22nd, 2006 at 5:56 pm
I am convinced without doubt this experience is going to enrich you financially in the years to come.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Casey,
You are posting too much of your personal information. I suggest you stop doing that. Have a nice Thanksgiving Holiday. Spend the time to be thankful that you are alive and healthy.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:23 pm
“I’m still trying to make sense of this whole credit score / FICO score mess. ”
It’s real simple Casey. It’s not a good score. Let me change that. It’s not a good score for those of us that wish to get and use credit in a constructive way. For someone that can buy six homes in half a year, at over market prices, under false pretenses, and get cash back under the table on the deals, only to completely waste that money, I really don’t know what it means.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:41 pm
You should get an account with Paypal & put a “donate button” on your blog. You would be surprised how many people would donate. A friend of mine did that a couple years ago and hundreds of people sent donations, some as low as $1 and some as high as $100.
www.paypal.com
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:44 pm
My FICO is 801 and I live in a very modest home, drive old cars and never go to Starbucks. I’m cheap cheap cheap, but, I have a good FICO score. Gotta go, Jacob Marley is at the foot of my bed rattling chains.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:44 pm
oops, sorry. I did not realize you had a Paypal account already.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:59 pm
When I was broke (man do I start a lot of comments this way here) I didn’t care what my FICO was, and I don’t care what it is now. Little side-trips of sightseeing! Wooptie doo!
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:08 pm
From comments section of previous post:
Aren’t you working that new job?
Do you really think a solution is sitting in your stack of email?
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Casey,
These scores are reflective of your situation. What I said about your other scores was true, if you had those scores. That other service is deceptive at best by using the names of the three credit reporting services. You won’t be able to refi.
Realistically, your best course of action at this point is to save one house by moving into it and paying for it and arranging short sales for the rest. Bankruptcy is also a viable option at this point. Your credit will take a bigger hit by holding onto all this stuff instead of taking one big write-off.
You already know how to obtain properties without traditional lenders, so bite the bullet and get these poor performing assets off your balance sheet and start fresh.
Nigel
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:51 pm
His score near the very bottom, they start FICO at 300 and go to 850. Under 500 is considered a DISASTER. Over 720 is golden. Its a very small range.
Here’s a quote from http://www.bad-credit-advisor......score.html
—
Bad FICO Score
FICO score from 500 to 580 is where the real trouble starts. Your credit is bad, period. You’ll get your loan and you won’t like it. But you should take it anyway, because that could be the beginning of your fresh start. Way to get away from bad credit. See repair your credit rating for more information.
FICO score of 499 and below … . My friend, you are in serious need for help for bad credit. There is very little what can be done and while it is still possible, the terms are going to be simply too brutal. The best thing is to try to repair bad credit first - the FICO credit score can be improved!
November 22nd, 2006 at 8:33 pm
[…] Original post by Casey Serin and software by Elliott Back […]
November 22nd, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Casey,
I am looking for a mentor to show me how to ignore that inner voice in my head called ‘common sense’. It’s caused me nothing but grief - I’ve stayed at my job, saved money, and have been taking care of my loved ones. Help me Casey! You are the kung-fu mutha f’n master of self-delusion and irrational risk taking!. Please be my ‘Rich Dad’!
- Poor Son
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:02 pm
YOU ARE GOING TO SUCCEED (ANSWER THIS!)
The contract you signed is GRATE. Athough it was a weak decision, but you will win. Just CALM DOWN. Kiyosaki’s interest is that you succeed, he will make millions with you. Just CALM DOWN and start thinking on how you will catch up their offer again.
mi father always tell me that in business nobody gives for free. They invested in you, they want you to succeed, they will make millions with your story. Now your story is taking down their reputation, but if you succeed it will reinforce their reputation.
CALM DOWN, nobody gives for free they invested on you. They will make millions on you if you succeed, that’s what all Rich Dads want. They don’t want you brighness in business, they want you to succeed and sell your story. CALM DOWN.
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:40 pm
CREDIT SCORES:
Here’s the basic deal.
A “credit score” is a generic term. “FICO” is a specific kind of credit score.
FairIsaac sells a statistical “model,” that “scores” your data. But FairIsaac doesn’t loan money and when they developed the model, they weren’t even a credit reporting agency like Experian and the others.
Credit reporting agencies such as Experian use this model, but each can emphasize various aspects of it to suit their needs.
A credit score is like a risk score that an insurer may use. Nothing personal, but when you manage credit in a certain way, the likelihood of default is higher than if you manage credit in another way.
Does that mean that someone with a low score is a deadbeat? No. Does that mean that someone with a high score is a safe risk. No. But there is some predictive value in past credit management habits.
It used to be that no credit score was really a “FICO score,” per sem but more accurately an “Experian score derived from the FICO model.” But mortage brokers would generally refer to this as “your FICO score.”
Now, of course, FairIsaac offers its own score at the myfico site. And that makes life more confusing.
I can’t be sure, but I’ll bet most major lenders just average three or four scores, or maybe drop the lowest and average the rest.
This score really represents your location on a “distribution,” sort of like a bell curve. If you think of a bell curve, there are few scores in the tails of the curve, with most in the middle.
But this distribution isn’t a traditional bell curve. It’s more like a lopsided bell curve with more people skewing to the left. In other words, there’s probably less predictive value in the difference between 400 and 450 than there is between 700 and 750.
Is there really predictive value in the score? I have no idea. The model is proprietary and is presumably changed from time to time.
Some lenders may place all too much faith in the score, but think they’ll save a mint in manually reviewing credit histories — a sum that more than pays off measured against any extra delinquencies.
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:43 pm
One more thing….
Credit monitoring? Go for what you think is most accurate tool to guard against inaccurate data and identity theft.
If it comes with a score, great, but don’t worry about the specific score so much. That’s not what you’re paying for. If you apply for credit, a lender is just going to use their own procedures and scores.
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:04 pm
I offer a free 30 minutes seminar on this subject on http://www.brokencredit.com
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:30 pm
I think the scores will continue to go down, but I don’t really know what I’m talking about. It’s interesting to see when your credit finally started to take a hit though. Do you know specifically whether the Dallas guy kept his word and didn’t report you?
Let me reiterate the wise words of Daniel from Argentina… “CALM DOWN. I myself would like to take a bite from this tasty pie. CALM DOWN. CALM DOWN. CALM DOWN.”
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:43 pm
Hey, it says you still have 17% of your credit available, so why not get a cash advance now while you still can? If you wait too long they will probably close your accounts.
I had scores of 500-ish a few years ago and now 780. The secret? paytrust.com got me out of the habit of paying bills late all the time. I set it to pay automatically all my bills. All I need to do is keep a cushion of money in my checkin account.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Just started reading this site a couple days ago and am absolutely fascinated by it.
Casey most comments I have about it you have seen a thousand times already so lets just jump ahead to the comments I havent seen.
1. Was reading about you putting 1k down on a fixer upper to assign to another investor. In the future if you find a way out of this mess do not give up any actual cash.
You set up what is called a revolving trust account with an attorney..and in your offers your earnest money is a promissory note held at the Law offices of blah blah payable upon closing.
Yes you do have to keep 1k in the trust account…but since it is payable upon closing…the attorney sends a check to escrow when the escrow agent calls for it and in the escrow instructions you have 1k of it set aside and put back into the trust account. This is the revolving part….that way you can use the same revolving 1k trust account for multiple offers and never have to pony up more than 1k. After all the money is used the payment of the promissory notes…unless 1 of those is called in then there is no need to replenish the account out of your own pocket.
2. have you been to creonline.com yet…..there are tons of REI’s there and you can get any information related to REI for free….and tons have posted about being in your situation..you may find some options that could help you that you didnt see before.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:31 pm
The paytrust.com site referenced by HungryBear above seems a little fishy to me. Maybe I’m overly cautious, but every warning sign that you’re supposed to look for in phishing scams seems to be present on the paytrust.com site - though it has an intuit logo, there is no link from intuit’s site or even a reference on their site to paytrust. The first sign-up page asks for your social and all your banking info. Who knows, maybe it’s legit, but I certainly wouldn’t entrust my info to a company that doesn’t go out of their way to make it clear that they’re legit, especially when it would be so easy to do so via the [trusted] intuit website.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Paytrust is legit. I’ve been a customer for 3+ years.
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:17 am
Tim said, “And I still think Casey’s story is one of the more important stories of 2006.”
It’s important because it’s not unique. Isn’t that an irony. If Casey was an isolated case of getting into financial trouble there’d be little interest in the story. Instead, he fell into the traps laid out by lenders, brokers, the government, realtors, high profile get-rich-quick hucksters: Housing always goes up; here, take some of our excess money; No doc loans are OK; RE is the only way to get rich; and on and on.
Casey’s story has been and will be repeated in CA, NV, FL, AZ, VA, OR, and elsewhere across the country. Casey has chosen to publicize his story, so he’s different than the others.
The term ‘Poster Child’ has been used a lot to describe Casey’s position and publicity. It’s an apt term, because we will be thousands of others like him in the coming months, and we will point at them and say, “Hmmm, just like Casey.”
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:28 am
Here is another thought. I applaud your intent to repay your lenders. It shows strength of chararacter. However, I fear that it will saddle you for life. Just think about it, if you end up owing 400k, and you want to pay it back, it’s like having a mortgage on a house. It’s $2,400/month for 30 years (@6%).
Why not simply decalre BK. It will clear you from (most of) your debts and let you get on with your life. If your character requires you to repay the loans, repay them. But you will be in control of the situation, not your lenders. If you go gangbusters and make a mint in RE, you can pay them from that. If you end up flipping burgers, you won’t have to (or be able to) pay.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:13 am
Here’s an idea for all of us to help out Casey… Support his sponsors (i.e. clicking on his ads)!
I used to run a site that ended up with AdSense ads from attorneys, and I was getting close to $1 per click on average, I kid you not. I guess attorneys have lots of $$$ to blow on advertising. I don’t know what kind of rates Casey is getting on his ads but I wouldn’t underestimate the money online ads can bring in.
Casey must be getting a couple of thousand visitors a day, judging from his Alexa ranking. If each of us clicked on ten ads, that’s gotta be at least a buck for Casey. If a thousand of us each did ten clicks a day, that’d be a thousand bucks a day! I think it’s really help Casey with his bills and keep the blog going longer.
So what do you say? 10 clicks a day for Casey!!!
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:31 am
Casey,
Check out www.prosper.com
Happy Thanks giving
Dallas
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:31 am
@Jerry: Don’t do that too much or Google will kick me out of the program for gaming the system. I sure would not want to be the advertiser who is paying $1/click and getting a bunch of fake clicks.
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:59 am
Casey,
That’s the most honest thing I’ve heard you say…. at least you know how the advertising system works.
I really think that’s your true calling, not real estate.
Make your money in advertising, marketing and entertainment. Then you can buy all the properties with CASH and even make bad purchases with little risk to yourself.
-Big Cheese
November 23rd, 2006 at 8:28 am
Hello,
Casey wouldnt want to do anything illegal! It seems he is more afraid of Google than of the IRS.
November 23rd, 2006 at 8:32 am
everyone should check out one man’s site,
carbuyingtips.com
he deserves a paypal tip from grateful readers!!!
casey’s paypal tipjar would be a handout! a virtual version of the cardboard ‘helpmeimhomeless’ sign
November 23rd, 2006 at 9:42 am
Am I missing something here?
If your Advertisers can’t help you, why would I want to visit them?
It’s like someone blogging that they have cancer while advertising cures to cancer web sites.
November 23rd, 2006 at 10:21 am
Casey,
I have looked at your site after hear the profile on NPR and I have come to the conclusion that if you and your site are real and not Internet fakes, you are a scammer at heart and will always be. Your true colors show in your comment to Jerry concerning click fraud:
“@Jerry: Don’t do that too much or Google will kick me out of the program for gaming the system. I sure would not want to be the advertiser who is paying $1/click and getting a bunch of fake clicks.”
A little click fraud is ok?
November 23rd, 2006 at 10:56 am
“I sure would not want to be the advertiser who is paying $1/click and getting a bunch of fake clicks.”
Holy cow! First ethical Casey comment so far! (At least that wasn’t just posturing)
November 23rd, 2006 at 11:36 am
“Casey must be getting a couple of thousand visitors a day, judging from his Alexa ranking. If each of us clicked on ten ads, that’s gotta be at least a buck for Casey. If a thousand of us each did ten clicks a day, that’d be a thousand bucks a day! I think it’s really help Casey with his bills and keep the blog going longer.”
No. I’m not going to participate in fraud to enable Casey to avoid the consequences of his own fraud. Also, Casey is correct: he’d be kicked out of the program within a week if people started doing what you’re suggesting. Whatever happened to basic ethics?
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Jerry
Screw Casey, and why don’t you pony up that $10 yourself instead of swindling his advertisers..wait a minute..you are a crook, just like Casey, never mind, scumbag.
November 24th, 2006 at 1:34 am
Here is my advice on this…. If you file for bankruptcy by law it is suppose to stay on your credit reports for ten years. For those not familiar you can look up the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA) that was passed by President Bush. It states that negative items stay on your reports for 7 years except for bankruptcies. Bankruptcies stay for 10 years.
Based on above here are your choices;
You can file for bankruptcy protection but since you have business and personal credit as well as real estate involved it will be separate fillings and more complex. The choices are a chapter 11 filing for your business. This means you plan on reorganizing your business. Creditors have to stop all collection efforts immediately. A trusty will be appointed over all your financing (which I think in your case is not a bad idea anyway) and you will have to present a plan to the court on how you will pay off these debtors. The court will have to approve the plan. Your creditors can still fight it but usually a good plan always wins over creditors. You would have 3 years to pay off the debt and at the end whatever is left for balkances is written off. The next option is a chapter 7 filing were all debt is dissolved and your creditors have to walk away with nothing (except with the mortgage lenders they walk with what the trustee sale brings in on the properties). Chapter 7 requirements have changed since president Bush signed a new bankruptcy law so there may be some other things you need to do first. Chapter 7 works for both personal and business. There is also a chapter 13 filing which is the personal version of chapter 11. In any of the cases it stops your creditors collection efforts. You should seek a good bankruptcy attorney who can advise you on the specifics and go from there. Find an attorney that specializes in bankruptcy not a general practice office.
Your other option is to do nothing. I do not recommend this because it is a deeper hole than bankruptcy. If you do nothing your creditors will foreclose on your properties and will then write off the unsecured debt after the sixth month of in activity. This is the fed law in which they have to follow when it concern unsecured debt. After the sixth month you do not pay on it they will write it off by law and then they will either hold onto the debt for further collection in house, sell it to a collection agency, or hire an attorney collector to try and collect it. In your case about a year to 2 later they will file law suits against you for the debt. At that point this is where the fun really begins. You will then be going into courts all the time on these law suits. Now if you have no money to pay them and nothing to attach or reposes then you will just keep appearing in court every six months per creditor for many years to come or until you move out of state in which they would try and find you.
Bottom line is you are in way over head and can not get out of this unless you win the lottery. In that case you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning. Even with you short selling everything you will still owe on the unsecured debt. Also keep in mind that if other foreclosures happen and they can not get the full amount that you owe they may have recourse to get the difference from you by filling a lawsuit. The recourse all depends on the language of your actual note. If the note states without recourse (which they usually don’t because it doesn’t benefit the creditor) then you are clear. They can not come after you. Absent that unless state law says otherwise you could get sued for the shortfall. Given all the unsecured and all the shortfall you could end up with I agree with Tim that your debt is around 350 to 400k. Also even with the short sales you still could end up bad because the IRS codes view short sale difference from what is owed and what is not paid as income. Then you will be stuck paying personal income tax on that amount. The IRS does not go away and bankruptcy can not protect you from them. So I can not say it enough hire a bankruptcy attorney who specializes in the field and be done with it. Once it is over you can get a fresh start and get this weight off of you once and for all. If your worried about doing real estate deals and how to finance them don’t. You need to re-evaluate yourself first then if you still want to try there are lenders out there that can finance your home 1 day out of bankruptcy and considering the factors involved the rate would still be in the low 8%. That is not bad considering your credit at that point. All you would need to do it stay with that for 2 years and show responsibility and your credit worthiness will go up.
As far as the credit scoring system this is where free advice and I do agree. You need not worry about it now it is done use it only to monitor your actual accounts and in case of fraud which in your case is very unlikely because with your credit no one could get any credit with your id. Also free advice mortgage lenders pull from the three big ones, Tran Union, Equifax, and Experian. Then they take your middle score loosing your high and low. This is just for your knowledge.
One last thing “say what?” that is the worst advice you could give. First Casey got himself into this mess by thinking he was going to just flip. Second which is even more important Daniel Ortega just got re-elected as president after 16 years. In case you do not know who he is he was the one that caused a civil unrest in Nicaragua the first time around. He is a Marxist dictator who hates capitalist and everything about America. Last time around he confiscated everyone’s property for the benefit of the state. Stop and know what is going on before you give bad advice like that again. I do not know if you did it as a joke but someone unknowing could take that advice and then potentially loose there shirt.
November 24th, 2006 at 7:01 am
Wow, why is it that Casey and people who agree with him always get loose and lose confused? Is it a code? A genetic defect? Calling Daniel Ortega a dictator? - also hilarious.
November 24th, 2006 at 8:40 am
Tom: you had my attention until your last sentence - “…then potentially loose there shirt. ” [should be ‘lose their’]
Is it just coincidence that Casey and a number of other posters continually use ‘loose’ when they mean ‘lose’???
Coincidence? hhmmmmm………
November 24th, 2006 at 10:53 am
Uh…why are you even spending $10/month on figuring out your credit score? Your credit score is shot–that’s all you really need to know. Does it really matter what the number is at this point?
November 24th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
How bad is it, really, if Casey gets booted by his advertisers? Sounds like click fraud is one way to do it for those that want to speed his ultimate demise. Plus, no more ads (for those still using IE)!
November 24th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Why is it so many people have no knowledge of history but yet they want to make stupid remarks as to only show their true ignorance on the topic? Does one really think that when the s**t flows out of one’s month that we are all suppose to sit there in belief of what is being said? I find that 73 percent of the population is nothing more than clueless, 22 percent has a clue and knowledge of their surroundings, and the other 5 percent are the innovators who make our lives easier to live. By the way BFFChucky what would you call Ortega, your hero?
November 24th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
There’s nothing wrong with TrueCredit. You just can’t compare those TC scores to FICO since it’s an entirely different scoring model. TC scores are fairly meaningless other than comparing with other historical TC scores since no creditor uses them in loan decisions.
The FICO score you get from WAMU is not the same FICO score you get from myfico.com. WAMU started this month using the NexGen scoring model. Previously it was the bank-card enhanced FICO model.
In your situation, paying for FICO scores is money thrown away. Instead, you should have kept TC to monitor your reports for changes. It’s the best deal around in that regard.
Also, with that Experian report number, you can now pull a fresh report from EX anytime you’d like for free. Go through the “view credit report again” link. It’ll pull a current report. One benefit of getting reports directly from the bureaus themselves is that they show soft pulls. None of the monitoring services show those.
Also, score is just one factor in many creditor decisions. Internal scoring and manual reviews are used quite often. In your case, I’d forget about scores for a while since nobody is going to extend credit to you anyway, and just focus on the tradelines and inquries reporting.
November 24th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Are the Experian credit score and the VantageScore the same?
November 25th, 2006 at 11:59 am
I never understood a fico score. Mine is at 813. After reading all this, I realize it is not the best, but it is pretty good. I only have two credit cards and probably have only had 10 loans in my life.
I still have one small mortgage loan to pay-off and then I will be debt free. Although I still plan on RE investments, I will continue to write checks instead of giving away my future for the present.
November 26th, 2006 at 9:20 am
The lowest score I’ve ever pulled for someone was a 405, although my company has framed credit FICO score (with name and address blacked out) of 397 for some FB. I can’t tell you how remarkable a 397 is because 400 is supposed to be the lowest you can score. Even if you took out 10 various loans, and never made a payment on any of them, and had additional 10 collection accounts, you couldn’t get a score that low. Given his current financial condition, Casey might have a very good shot of beating 397. In fact, if he goes lower than 397, I will contribute $100 to the tip jar, because this type of accomplishment cannot go unnoticed.
November 27th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Don, do not worry whether your score is the highest. At 813, you have no worries.
Nigel, again, the boy could not refinance even with his other scores. He has no income so he would need to do a stated income loan. Unfortunately, his stated income would need to pass a reasonableness test. I believe someone previously said he would need about 28k a month to service his existing debt so he would not pass the debt to income requirement. He would also be turned down for numerous other reasons - loan to value ratios on the properties, non-owner occupied, etc. No chance, my friend, outside of hard money or Guido.
I have seen a 384 credit score from Equifax - lowest ever in my office.
November 28th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Ouch, that score makes me cringe… Then again, it’s a pretty accurate reflection of the crisis you are in.
January 6th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
one of the primary reasons my score is so low is that I “have no real estate accounts.” More info on the Vantage Score A few months ago, Casey Serin of I Am Facing Foreclosure committed the same mistake, pulling his TrueCredit score instead of his actual FICO. (See comments on the first link for people criticizing his choice of credit score and telling him to get his real FICO.) What’s the problem? A credit score is a credit score, right? Well, yeah, but not the REAL credit score. There is The One True
March 30th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Maybe if you stop blowing money on hair dye and Banana Republic, and WORK, you’d be out of this mess.
DEE DEE DEE!