I think a score of 640 with a minimum of a 20% down payment would qualify you for a conventional/conforming loan. Read somewhere some lenders might consider a score of 600 with an even bigger down payment. But don't quote me on that. Quick fixes to the FICO score isn't the wisest of ideas - it takes a bit of time. Things fade from the report over time, but paying off a collection won't remove it from the report for seven years. Best path to take is pay bills on time. Use a credit card wisely keeping any balance low. Don't shuffle credit cards around shopping for a lower interest rate. Don't close out unused credit cards and don't open up any new ones. PS, the highest FICO score is 850 - there is another calculator (VantageScore??) which goes up to 990, I think... but a whopping big looking score on Vantage isn't any better a rating to a lender than what you'd see with the commonly used FICO scoring.

Knowledge is power. They don't teach much about money management in school. Many didn't learn much about it at home - as children grow, it seems to me wise to have them gain in-depth knowledge, incrementally, of how the family's financial system works. When I was a kid, we got a weekly allowance, that grew as we grew, and we were epected to buy our clothes for school and cover school expenses (which were smaller than currently). World War II began in 1939 when I was 10, the farmhands went off to war and what Dad and this 10 year old, plus a couple smaller, got done - got done: the rest ... didn't. We had lots of work in summer and Dad paid us for that, which helped us buy the things that we needed to return to school and there was an increase in our allowance, to compensate for the increased chores, year-round. We were encouraged to save some - I had a bank account when I was too young to see over the counter ... and we were expected to pay at Sunday School, church-based youth group, etc. from our allowance. In case of dire emergency, we could borrow against future allowance from Dad, which entailed some questions as to whether we might have foreseen the problem, and, even if not been able to have seen it coming, to cover the cost from savings, had we chosen to have some/(any?). And we learned early the discipline of getting along for a while on less after we'd borrowed, for Dad expected us to repay those loans earlier rather than later. Good training as to management of debt ... which would be helpful much later, when "credit" cards appeared on the scene: we knew that they didn't offer "free money". When we use someone else's money - usually they require some compensation (and, sometimes ... way too much: have you investigated the economics of the recently-arrived "payday loan" game?)! After one has stepped into a bear trap - it's a bit late to wish that one had chosen where to put one's feet more carefully! Looks as though Microsoft has cut some of our opportunity for learning about one portion of personal financial management a bit short, also. ole joyful P.S. When one guy, regardless of how central a position he holds in our economy, can become the richest man in the world in half of a generation ... ... do you figure that possibly sometimes people get overcompensated for some innovative discovery that they have made (usually, along with a number of others)? That just possibly our free-market-based economy could stand some tweaking? And the Bolsheviks and the Commuist systems aren't any better - look at all of the newly-minted millionaires ... nay, billionaires ... that have been appearing in Russia and China as their system matures (goes to seed?). And during their heyday, they arranged things so that not too many became part of the core system - didn't want to spread the largesse around too much - or it'd get too thin for each! o j

DH & I also have several cards with no balance on them. We will be applying for a mortgage soon, so I asked my banker this question. He told me to cancel the majority of the cards, but to keep either a couple with fairly low limits or one card with a pretty decent limit. He said that banks like to see someone have $30,000-$40,000 worth open credit on cards (depending on your income). He says that lets them know that you have a source of available money that you can access quickly. He said they don't like to see huge amounts of open credit because that shows the potential for a problem. We pulled our own credit reports & they said that the amount of unused credit we have may actually be hurting our score. We have only a tiny fraction owed but a lot of open credit. Another thing my banker & the credit report mentioned was the ratio of how much you owe to the amount of open credit. Example: If you owe $5,000 & have two cards with a total credit limit of $20,000, cancelling one card that has a $10,000 limit can actually hurt you. Instead of having a balance that equals one quarter of your available credit, you will now owe an amt. equal to half of your available credit. If you want to cancel, make sure you write a letter to the credit card company & keep it & proof that you mailed it on file. Make sure to request that they note in your file that the card was cancelled at your request. Having a lender cancel your card can hurt your credit score. If you won't be applying for a loan any time soon, you can just leave them & they will drop off of your credit report after a few years.

Evaf , thank you! I will check out credit karma. The only negative things on each of our credit reports are a few medical bills. Yes we do use loans ( like I said my husband likes to change cars every year... oh, and i have a new student loan, graduated nursing school last year!) And we are looking to refinance our home, so that will be a new loan. The guy at lending tree calledafter we were apapproved and said he was puzzled by the low scores, because they have people with scores of 725 or better that have don't have credit histories as good as ours. He said that they have a department that specializes in fixing credit scores, and they are going to look at ours because they shouldn't be this low. We will see if he calls back, because the last one didn't. That's why I asked the question here. Evaf, i thank you. Yours was a very helpful response. Kirkhall, I'm not sure if I'm being overly sensitive, but I did not find your response helpful at all.