and of course if anyone really wants to know their FICOs the only way to do it is myfico.com through your own affiliate link.
As far as bumpage, there are people who have been using monitoring services to pull their credit daily for years. The softs bump hards off. However, many of the monitoring services have been closing accounts of daily pullers.
Also wanted to add that utilization counts huge and usually credit cards report statement balance. In other words if you put $ 1 million a month on your AMEXs and the statements cut, it might not matter if you pay the whole bill off immediately. It might still report as something like current balance: $1 million, credit limit/high balance: $1 million.
Of course all my expenses go on corporate business cards so none of the balances show on my personal credit reports. Only my personal cards where I have lines like $25.00 on a $25,000 limit show up there.
There was a thread here several months back where i explained why I only used corporate cards on PPC and other things.
Some things you just cant do much about. Age for example. A 19 year old is obviously going to lose points for short credit history. A 50 year old with some spotty accounts and 30 year old Sears card is going to get more points in that area.
To maximize what you can control, I would say utilization is about the # 1 thing. Have low reporting balances compared to reporting credit limits.
