Get smart with your money
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Removing your hand from the cookie jar.
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One of the most persistent credit scoring myths is that you have one.
You don’t have one, you have many, and they change all the time.
The dominant model is the FICO, but even that comes in many flavors. You can get a taste for how many at MyFICO.
When I bought my scores there recently, my FICO 8 from Equifax was 846 on the 300-to-850 scale. But my FICO 5, the score Equifax most commonly sells to mortgage lenders, was 797.
There was even wider variation in my auto and credit card scores, are calculated on a 250-to-900 scale. My FICO Auto Score 8 was 867, while my FICO Auto Score 5 was 810. My FICO Bankcard Score 8 was 869 and my FICO Bankcard Score 5 was 797.
My scores from Experian ranged from 796 (FICO Score 3, used by some credit card issuers) to 878 (FICO Auto Score 8). The clutch of numbers from TransUnion ran from 806 (FICO Score 4, used by some mortgage lenders) to 874 (FICO Auto Score 8).
MyFICO used to serve up just one score per bureau. I like this wider view, since it better reflects the fact that lenders use different versions and generations of the formula.
TMI? Maybe. But I’ll take it over the days when credit scores were such a closely-guarded secret that you weren’t even supposed to know they existed.