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#it is wild having an 800 spread between credit scores lol
so-i-did-this-thing · 9 months
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So, I have a big advice post to write, but until I have the spoons, I want to warn everyone now who has legally changed their first name:
Your credit score may be fucked up and you need to:
check *now* that all your financial institutions (credit cards, loans, etc) have your current legal name and update where necessary
check that all 3 credit bureaus, on their respective sites, not via a feed like Credit Karma (so, Trans Union, Equifax, Experian) are collecting that info correctly and generating the right score - you might need to monitor them for a few months if you made any changes in #1
I am about to apply for a mortgage and learned that as of 2 weeks ago:
Experian suddenly thinks I am 2 different people - Legal Name and Dead Name (none of whom have a score)
Equifax has reported my active 25 year old mortgage as closed and deleted one of my older credit cards, hurting my score by 30+ points
Credit scores influence everything from big home/car loans to insurance rates to job and housing applications.
And for whatever reason, the 3 bureaus that have the power to destroy your life are shockingly fragile when it comes to legally changing one's first name.
So, yeah. Once I get this mess cleaned up for myself, I have a big guide in the works if you find yourself in the same predicament. But with the mass trans migration out of oppressive states, odds are there are a lot of newly renamed people who are about to have a nasty shock when applying for new housing.
Take care, folks.
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