high total of outstanding debt

[Anonymous]

First off, thanks to myFICO, I'm finally otw to good credit! I've lived 7 years in credit HELL and now I'm finally seeing my scores come up as all my baddies fell off!

I pulled my report again today as my next to last baddy fell off and my score rose 20 pts to 644! YAY! My last one will be gone in about three weeks.

Now looking at my myfico report, the high total of outstanding debt is the only thing that is "not good" on the FICO score ingredients.
My question is, is my debt keeping my score down? Will it ever come up on its own, or will these installment debts keep it down? I really can't afford to make BIG payments on these. I'm just a poor little teacher!

My debts:
Student Loan: $16,768
Small installment appliance loan: $955
Car loan: $11,948

Total: $29,671

This is the only thing on my credit report, except for one baddy that will fall off this month for $80 and I just opened a credit card with a CL of $500 because it told me I needed some revolving credit.

[Anonymous]

bump -

Will student loans and my car note debt keep my credit score low?

[guiness56]

Other than payment history and AAoA, installment loans play a very little part in utilization. 

[marty56]

I thought the debt comment by MyFICO was CC debt, not installment loans.  Are you sure your CC debt is reported as zero?  If the installment loan was reported as revolving and the CL is 1000 and you owe $955, that would be maxed out and the source of the comment.

[smallfry]

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@Anonymous wrote:
First off, thanks to myFICO, I'm finally otw to good credit! I've lived 7 years in credit HELL and now I'm finally seeing my scores come up as all my baddies fell off!

I pulled my report again today as my next to last baddy fell off and my score rose 20 pts to 644! YAY! My last one will be gone in about three weeks.

Now looking at my myfico report, the high total of outstanding debt is the only thing that is "not good" on the FICO score ingredients.
My question is, is my debt keeping my score down? Will it ever come up on its own, or will these installment debts keep it down? I really can't afford to make BIG payments on these. I'm just a poor little teacher!

My debts:
Student Loan: $16,768
Small installment appliance loan: $955
Car loan: $11,948

Total: $29,671

This is the only thing on my credit report, except for one baddy that will fall off this month for $80 and I just opened a credit card with a CL of $500 because it told me I needed some revolving credit.

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You should see a very nice pop once your last negative falls off your reports. I saw a negative comment concerning my car loan until I had paid off a considerable amount of it. See if you still have this negative on your reports once you are squeaky clean. 

[Anonymous]

YAY!  Thanks I appreciate the comments.  I'm excited to see what it will be when that $80 collection comes off.  It'll be this month.

Yep, I'm sure its not CC debt, because I just now got a HSBC card and its not showing up yet.  All bad CC debt fell off over the last couple of months.  I'll be so grateful to finally be in the good credit club.  Bad credit sure does hurt your self esteem.  7 years is a lonnnnnng time!

[RobertEG]

If your only remaining derog is a CA, once that falls off, you will see a good bump in your FICO score.

FICO does not score based on "debt."  it scores based on your % util of each account.  As has been said, installment loans typically have a high % util, but for obvious reasons, FICO does not score these with any great impact.

Whatever impact the installment loans are now having on your score wont show much improvement by paying them down at an accelerated rate.

After good payment history, the most important factor in your FICO scoring is % util of revolving (CC) debt.

Are you sure of the falloff date for the remaining CA?  Do you know the DOFD on the OC account, and has 7 1/2 years transpired from that date?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your answers!  It sucks that CC util is the highest scoring factor in FICO because I only have the one card for $500 now.  Hardly enough to even charge household expenses for the month without me being paranoid about the reporting date. 

I'm sure it will fall off because it was the only derog I had that wasn't 7 years old yet.  It was for $80 to Sprint and I made arrangements with the collector and it will come off in 30 days(or probably bout 20 now).  I'm excited to see the jump and hope that I can qualify for a prime card with a pretty good limit at that time.  I may give it a few months and let this new card report tiny balances or PIF and see if that also helps bump me up.  I'm trying to get to 700.  It'll feel like a miracle! 

[haulingthescoreup]

Just a general note: While util is very much the driving factor, total balances are looked at for scoring purposes, and they can hurt. It's actually reason #1 on the FICO reason code list, although #1 does NOT mean the most important. High revolving util is reason #10.

Control util first, and then work on getting down the balances.

[smallfry]

Hopefully the collector is good for his word. Did you do a Pay for Delete on that Sprint account? When was the Date of First Delinquency?Just wondering if the new FICO scoring would even take this under $100 debt into consideration in the scores once it is adopted.