Credit Surprises

Moving forward with our goal of buying our first house, one of the preparatory things Don and I decided to do this weekend was order a free copy of our personal credit reports to make sure everything is in order for when we start applying for mortgages. We did discover a couple of things.

First, we have excellent credit. All of our accounts are in good standing with perfect payment history. Yes! Too bad the free report doesn't also give you a score but I'm quite sure we are in the 700s.

Second, apparently I have a parking ticket from Tacoma, outstanding since 2006. Oops, didn't even know about that one. So I'll have to make a couple of calls to get that one straightened out.

Third, while we were excited to be able to report to our potential mortgage lenders that we are 100% credit card debt free, we realized that our credit report doesn't exactly reflect this. Although we have paid off all our personal credit cards, turns out that since Don is an authorized signer on the DG credit cards, all of their credit card debt shows up on Don's personal credit report. Ouch! Don't know how I missed that one given that I'm a Credit Analyst for a living but for some reason never put it together. Well that's some new increased motivation to get those paid off even faster.

Finally, I was a little bit startled when I printed out my report and discovered the first two items on there were large credit cards that I didn't recognize. A little bit of investigating and I promptly figured out that these accounts belonged to my parents for which I was an authorized signer on their account. So I got to call my parents and ask them to take me off of their credit cards. I bet that was a fun call for them. It only took 31 years but I've finally achieved financial independence from my parents. I'm a big girl now!