How do I establish my first FICO score?

by Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, The Money Coach

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Your FICO credit scores – like all credit scores – are based on the underlying data and information that is contained in your credit files with the “Big 3” credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. According to Fair Isaac, the company that created the three-digit FICO scores (which range from 300 to 850 points), in order to have a FICO score generated for you, your credit history must contain at least three things:

•   a minimum of one credit account that has been open for six months or longer
•   at least one account that is “undisputed” and that has been reported to a credit bureau during the past six months
•   an absence of any notation in your credit files that you are “deceased” or that an account you are associated with belongs to a deceased person

Some Issues Are Out of Your Control

Note that if you recently began establishing a credit history, there could be delays in you being assigned a credit score. Additionally, there are several factors outside of your control that may impact your ability to have a credit score generated. For example, assume you opened a credit card account six months ago. You may not yet have a FICO credit score because it’s possible that the credit card company took two or three months to actually report your account to the credit bureaus.

Additionally, there’s a good chance that you will not have a credit score if you have ever been listed as a co-signer or authorized user on a credit report, and the person with whom you were a co-signer/authorized user has died. In such a case, that person’s credit history would note that they are deceased. Additionally, the account you shared with that person would also reflect that it belonged to a deceased individual, which could impact you.