@Revelate wrote:
@Open123 wrote:
Scores matter on automatic approvals, but less so during a manual review.
Far and away the most important factor is to have a record of using credit and paying it on time. Meeting your obligations 100% of the time without any derogs will result in high scores and approvals for any CC, except for larger fixed loans which will dwelve deeper and examine debt to income, assets, etc...
This.
To try to address the OP: I think what we've said about not focusing on scores was simply confusingly presented.
People on this forum tend to get caught up in every little positive and negative in their credit score, and that is a route to insanity unfortunately. As a result many have simply suggested focusing on the underlying report data as that is relatively optimizable for anyone, and a pretty report will lead to a pretty score regardless of algorithm selected.
Yes, exactly what I was thinking! You will see posts "Why did my score go down 6 points" and agonizing over FICO 08 vs FICO 04 Credit Card enhanced etc. Except in a very few cases, you cannot know exactly what type of score an issuer will pull (and even if you did know, most of those scores are unavailable to consumers). So, as Rev says, the advice was make your report as good as possible, and whatever score is pulled will be as good as possible.
And as Open says, it's the obvious things that matter, pay on time, with a history of doing so, no baddies. Then some extra things, like don't have too many recent inquiries or new accounts.
But don't micromanage your score, because the chances are good that you are micromanaging one that the lender doesn't see!
