Credit Cards

[Wolf3]

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Revelate wrote:

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Edit: I think the "gaming the system" things I occasionally see in the news regarding FICO had more to do with various abuses of AU's and "credit fracking" and other forms of paying for positive tradelines.   Not simply paying one's credit cards early.  No lender cares about that, arguably they *like* that, and since the lender is the customer for FICO, I don't see FICO's changing.  To wit, the earlier the bank gets the money, the more money they make on their own fractional interest instead of us.

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IMO, paying for positive tradelines, and AU abuse is just plain FRAUD.   It is far beyond gaming the system.

[webhopper]

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jordanmedical wrote:

Lenders still know if you max out as highest cl is still reported on CRs.

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If your limit is 4200 and your highest reported balance is 4157... that is not a bad thing. I see it as a sign that you are making full use of your existing tradelines. In fact; on my discover card back when the limit was only 3500 I needed to charge about 1400 in work related travel. I maxed out and my balance reported was 4126. Literally 2 months later they gave me a CLI to 4200. Granted I had paid in full by that time

[Revelate]

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Wolf3 wrote:

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Revelate wrote:

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Edit: I think the "gaming the system" things I occasionally see in the news regarding FICO had more to do with various abuses of AU's and "credit fracking" and other forms of paying for positive tradelines.   Not simply paying one's credit cards early.  No lender cares about that, arguably they *like* that, and since the lender is the customer for FICO, I don't see FICO's changing.  To wit, the earlier the bank gets the money, the more money they make on their own fractional interest instead of us.

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IMO, paying for positive tradelines, and AU abuse is just plain FRAUD.   It is far beyond gaming the system.

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Ethically I completely agree with you; that said, arguably we pay for secured tradelines, so the line has to be drawn somewhere when it comes to gaming the system.  Is obtaining a secured credit card to help your FICO improve gaming the system?  Is opening a secured installment loan gaming the system in order to get the mix of credit function and potentially move you into a better bucket?

I think we can agree these are different shades of gray than some of the aforementioned issues, but I simply don't see paying early as gaming the system in any shape, form, or fashion.  

I think longer term if FICO really considered this to be a problem, they'd need to start calculating on what former balances were, and then start looking at trends.  Is balance X trending upward or downward, and at what rate of change?  Maybe it'd need to even get into second derivative terrority, I just don't know; however, that'd give a much better resolution as to whether someone was living within their means while at the same time making the absolute balances irrelevant.  Might be easier to solve now that we know payments vs. charges over a given month are being reported too which might be handy for lenders:  I know I'm getting all my big ticket purchases out of the way now well outside the six month run-up to a mortgage so when they go looking at my bank statements they'll see a nice predictable pattern.  That is probably gaming a different system too!

Anyway this is probably too much to ask for though anytime in the near future, but it'd neatly solve this issue, if it really is one to begin with.

[YahComb]

Paying a balance asap is no more gaming the system than using cash and debit cards. High balance field is there for a reason.

And of Course its not gaming to pay for your own secured line.but paying to have some strangers well established positive history sure as hell is.