June 26, 2009
Are credit inquiries hurting your FICO score? Bump them.
Written by: KyleIf you like this post, please subscribe to our Email Subscription to read our new posts in your email.
Remember that car you were thinking about buying? Credit inquiry. New cell phone? Credit inquiry. What about that store credit card to get a lousy 10% off? Credit inquiry.
Soft inquiries (inquries you initiate not for credit) such as pulling your credit report do not harm your score. Credit inquiries resulting from you requesting credit hurt your score. These are “hard inquiries” and most people think they won’t go away until they naturally fall off your credit report (2 years by law). There is a way to get the inquries off sooner.
Each credit reporting agency (CRA) such as Equifax (EQ) Trans Union (TU) or Experian (EX) has slots in wich they put your inquiries, hard or soft. Basically bumpage is filling all the slots for credit inquries with soft inquiries. The new soft inquiries “bump” off the hard inquiries and raise your credit score. NOTE: This will not work with Experian.
Don’t worry if you only have a couple of hard inquiries on your report. Use bumpage if you have MANY inquiries you’d like to get off relatively soon. If you pull every day, it should take about 90 days to bump your hard inquiries. It takes a little determination, but 90 days is a lot better than two years. I used this tactic after my App-O-Rama (signed up for 20-30 credit cards at once for 0% offers and bonuses), and healed my score in short order.
A cheap way to pull your credit report is using National City Identity Protect. They allow one pull every 24 hours.
Watch out for “choppage” and “splittage.” They’re beyond the scope of what we’re talking about here, but learn more by reading this post.
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[...] few days ago, when I was talking about bumping hard inquiries off your credit report, I mentioned choppage. Choppage is when soft inquiries are cut off of your credit report (usually [...]
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[...] consequences of hard inquiries staying on your credit report or FICO score. You already know about bumpage, accelerated bumpage, and choppage, so you’re not too worried about your Equifax or [...]