24 Intimate Facts Your Credit Score Ignores

We hear all the time about the things that affect our credit score like late payments and how much credit we're using. This article flips the coin and looks at all the things which do not get factored into your FICO credit score (remember, FICO is just an abbreviation for Fair Isaac & Company who developed a credit score formula).

What's Not in Your FICO Score
Although lenders may consider some of the following items separately from your FICO score when reviewing an application you have submitted, the FICO Score does not.

In fact, U.S. law prohibits credit scoring from considering these facts. You may be surprised to learn that your FICO Score itself does not consider:
1) your race.
2) your color.
3) your religion.
4) your national origin.
5) your sex.
6) your marital status.
7) whether you receive any public assistance.
8) whether you have ever exercised any of your consumer rights under the Consumer Credit Protection Act.
9) your age.
10) your salary.
11) your occupation.
12) your job title.
13) your employer.
14) the date you were employed.
15) your employment history.
16) where you live.
17) any interest rate you are being charged on another credit card or other account.
18) any reported child or family support obligations.
19) rental agreements.
20) inquiries or requests you have made for your credit report, in order to check it.
21) inquiries or requests made by lenders in order to make you a "pre-approved" credit offer.
22) inquiries/requests made by lenders to review your account with them.
23) inquiries or requests that are coming from employers.
24) whether or not you are participating in credit counseling of any kind.

No Such Thing As "Free" Credit Scores
There are two ways to get your credit scores and neither of them are free, despite what the television commercials say. First, you can purchase them directly from each of the credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion). Each score report will cost about ten bucks. Credit scores can change almost every day so buying all three for about $30 is useful for only a brief period of time. Instead, you may want to invest that same $30 into something more valuable.

Free Trial, Free Credit Scores, Freedom From Worry
The second way to get your credit scores is you can set up a free trial of a monthly subscription to real time credit monitoring. You will get access to your credit scores for "free" for trying a credit monitoring service. Credit monitoring can be a life saver; you would not believe the amount of attempted identity theft taking place all over the world (my parents have had their credit card number stolen three times in the past year). Unless you have credit monitoring, you may not find out until it is too late.