@CreditPhoenix wrote:Hi NRB525,
I financed a car and paid it off early. All payments were on time. I have a mortgage and all payments are on time. And then there's over 20 years in credit history. And yet, 760. Whatever. The system is stupid.
People need to stop thinking in terms of, "well gee, this is how they score", and think more along the lines of, "who's the most credit worthy?" People who make all their payments on time and always have are the most credit worthy. Who would you rather lend to? Think in terms of your own money and the answer becomes pretty obvious.
Your overthinking this.The first point is that a FICO score is a lot like schroedinger's cat, what it's
state is only matters when someone looks at it. You can control exactly how your utilization looks
at the time a HP is made, at all other times it is meaningless. My scores have been frozen for almost
two years, which means the lid on my FICO cat's box has been nailed shut for that time. I know my
score, but nobody new has been allowed to look at it, so it doesn't matter to the world at large.
The next point is that payment history very much matters, but credit issuers have decided that
the major delineator between "good" and "not good" is thirty days late. Get a 30 day late on your report
and you'll see exactly how positively your PIF history was viewed. Your beef seems to be the exact point
where creditors start making major demerits. They have decided that 30 days overdue is the point. The grey
area between always PIF and just never 30 days late is where a lot of profit is harvested by issuers. You
can't expect much scoring reductions be placed on a major source of profit.
The last point is that like any objective measurement of a social system, FICO was intended to not have
any influence on the subject's behavior that are being measured. FICO score would be far more perfectly
predictive of future behavior if we, the subjects being measured, were unaware and unifluenced by it. .A
competing pressure is that we, they subjects being measured, demand visibility and thus diminsh the
effectiveness of the measurement. If you want FICO to be the best reflection of your risk as a borrower, then
lobby for it to become secret and inaccessable to the account holders. If you allow the measured population
to see their own measurements, it will influence their behavior somewhat. Like it is with you now. Like it has
with me in a more extreme way.
Some parts of the FICO scoring algorythm are arbitrary, but they are well enough understood that if you
wish to have any particular score as goal, the way to get there is understood. Above score 760 though, the
real world value of the score is almost nothing. If you want an 850 FICO8, the community here can guide you.
I'd guess it would take you 3-4 years from where you are at now and the path will be very restrictive. Once you
get there though, there is nothing special waiting for you.
I would get a 3rd card though. For arbitrary reasons, 3 cards is a scoring sweet spot and the management costs of maintaining
a 3rd account can be almost nothing. You are free to think that 3 is dumb and 2 cards should be the sweet spot. I am
free to feel that 5 personal and one business card should be the perfection criteria. Neither matters as FICO is set to
3.
+
850 FICO8 since 2015, Thanks MyFICO - 5+ years since last HP