More often than not student loans are factored. That being said if the student loans are for a future lucrative profession, such as medical school debt, then some companies will overlook those loans just to get your business.

 

Umm. I work at a direct lender and look at files all the time so here is my take on it for you.

For your general question, in regards to open tradelines, the cards you have are fine. You don't HAVE to carry a balance when going into applying for anything, jus make sure you use them. If you have a tradeline that you've had for 5 years and never charged a thing, it pretty much doesn't exist in our eyes. If you continue to charge little things here and there on the cards and pay them in full each month, that will more than help to keep the tradelines current and show good payment history.

The only time it really starts affecting you negatively is when the proportion of your balances to limits is over about 40-50%. So as far as I can tell you are fine.

In regards to student loans, these are treated as regular loans, however depending on if you are working with a broker or direct lender it may vary depending if we count it into your debt to income ratio or not.

For example, if these loans are deferred, for at least a year, we ignore them completely. Just make sure you always pay on time

s2000raj - For the credit limits, revolving credit is treated seperately and not really factored in to the amount you qualify for really. It's mainly what payment you owe these creditors each month that we look at to factor into your debt to income ratio. So if your debt ratio is too high, sometimes we factor in that debt to pay it off with the loan proceeds to continue.. so either way theres always some way around it to make it work.

 

But.... if you opt out with the major credit reporting agencies, can car dealers still inquire on your credit and ding your score?

 

Opt out what? You can't opt out to have ppl not hit you for inquiries or report to the bureaus.

Stealerships need your social to run credit. Normally they have you fill out a brief app with your info.

If they let you test drive the car with just looking at or holding onto your license, test drive away! I've test driven a buncha cars before, just tell them you dont want to fill out anything. They normally just make sure you are licensed and send someone to go with you.

 

Yeah, I thought you could opt out of letting people see yolur credit to send you credit offers, and that would include any car dealerships doing inquiries.

I don't fill anything out when I test drive cars, but they do copy my driver's license.

 

Ahhhh yes. You can opt-out for pre-screened offers. But that wouldn't affect direct inquiries when you apply for things.

 

Right, so unless I fill out an inquiry at a dealership and they submit it, no dealer can just pull my credit once I've opted out, correct?

 

You opting out for prescreened offers really has nothing to do with dealerships running your credit for an inquiry. I guess ultimately as long as you don't fill out their lil application for credit for them to run your credit, you are good to go.

 

No you don't need a social security number to run credit. All you need is a name. An address, which they get from the driver's license, helps narrow it down.

As far as opting out that has nothing to do with creditor inquiries, just no prescreened mail offers.

When you give the car dealer your license they take it to mean you are authorizing them to check you out unless you tell them otherwise. That's not how the law reads, but they get away with it probably 99 times out of 100.

I liked the idea of the photocopied drivers license with the disclaimer at the bottom and getting it back after the drive (that doesn't mean they won't copy it before they give it back), but it does serve to put them on notice.

And like beanolo said, unused credit doesn't count against you in any way. Keeping credit limits to less than 50% of your credit line helps your credit score.

 

Just so you guys know, you can BUMP off your 'Hard' inquiries on Transunion and Equifax.

It takes about 2-3 months for the 'hard' inquiries to be bumped aff and replaced by 'soft' pulls which do not affect score.

To do this, Sign up for a credit monitoring service that allows daily pulls (Truecredit, etc.) and pull your credit daily. After about 3 months of doing this, hard pulls will begin to dissappear. Transunion gets BUMPAGE a little quicker than Equifax does. Experian inquiries cannot be bumped off.

Trust me....This works. It's basically a glitch in the databases of the credit reporting agencies.

Go to www.creditboards.com and snoop around for more info on this topic.