Fair Isaac is attempting to roll out a new scoring method that will hurt some folks, and help others. Under the new method, secondary account holders will no longer benefit from being on joint accounts. The more unscrupulous credit repair services would add a low scoring credit seeker to an account of an established high scoring credit user, with the two parties not having any relation to each other what so ever. This sounds like a necessary change, doesn’t it?

But what about the many married couples who are joint account holders on most everything? Now that secondary account holder may find herself floundering in credit quick sand. This may not be that big of a deal if employers, insurance companies and cell phone companies didn’t use your credit score as part of their various processes of determining your worthiness to their goods and services. Various blogs about the ‘net say this will have a huge impact on women, as they are typically the secondary account holders in most marriages.

The new formula rewards having a variety of accounts, like a mortgage, car loan, and credit cards. It also won’t ding you as deeply if all your accounts are in good standing except one; missing a payment on a small limit credit card won’t hurt you as much as it used to, as long as your other accounts are on time. Some folks scores will go up, some will go down. The new model will continue to reward healthy, responsible credit users, while still penalizing chronic late payers, with over-limit balances.

Fair Isaac expects to see their new scoring model implemented during 2008. Two of the big three are in testing phases currently, and the other is digging in saying they won’t use it until litigation between Fair Isaac and the big three is resolved. But whether you agree with it or not, no matter what the degree of impact will be on your credit, it is expected to be in full force by end of 2008, and it is important to understand the changes.

I always suggest to anyone trying to build credit that they sign up for a score reporting service that will track it monthly. You can learn very quickly what impacts your score and to what degree. You can go to http://www.myfico.com/ , http://www.freecreditreport.com/, and many others to obtain your report. By law, each credit reporting company has to provide one free report each year. Obtain your report and take the time to make the corrections. Many people have low score only because of faulty or outdated information on their report (i.e. - someone else’s account or collection, an old gym payment plan from college). Making these small changes is relatively easy and can have a significant impact on your score.

For more serious issues, you can use a credit repair service, but please check them out thoroughly.

Opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of author, and not to necessarily the opinions of Meadows Group Inc.
All rights reserved on all original content, non-original content is given credit | Michelle Berry | 2009