hurt feelings

[legranddamme]

i've done damn near all i can do to raise my score and for some reason it won't budge.

i have a secured card, 2 credit cards, 2 store cards, took out and paid off a secured loan. my balances are all low and in good standing but my score won't increase. wwwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyy??!!!!

btw, i don't need a car loan i have a car that's been paid for already for years.

[coldnmn]

Have you pulled your credit reports to see if there is something holding you back. If not your allowed 1 free report from the credit agencies once per year. From either annualcreditreport.com for free or purchase them here.  

Good luck !

[Kratos-TM]

To gain points, all cards have to have zero balance except one. The one with a balance has to be about 2-4% of its total limit.

[AndySoCal]

On your MYFCIO credit report what are the factors listed as hurting your score?

[Walt_K]

What is your score?

[Gunnar419]

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@Kratos-TM wrote:

To gain points, all cards have to have zero balance except one. The one with a balance has to be about 2-4% of its total limit.

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That's advice for fine tuning an already good score, but it's certainly not the only way to gain points. For somebody rebuilding, other actions might be much more important.

I agree, we need to know much more about OPs credit picture first.

[takeshi74]

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@legranddamme wrote:

i've done damn near all i can do to raise my score and for some reason it won't budge.

i have a secured card, 2 credit cards, 2 store cards, took out and paid off a secured loan. my balances are all low and in good standing but my score won't increase. wwwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyy??!!!!

btw, i don't need a car loan i have a car that's been paid for already for years.

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You need to tell us a lot more if you want answers.  Have you carefully reviewed all your reports?  What have you done so far?  "Damn near all" doesn't really tell us anything.  How long have you been at this?  Credit building/rebuilding is a long, slow process and there are no quick fixes.

Scoring isn't based on just balances and current standing.  As always, it's utilization, payment history, derogs, AAoA, inquiries, number of accounts and diversity of credit.  Where do you stand on all those matters?

[RobertEG]

Slow, or lack of movement, in score is often based on having major derogs still showing under payment history.

FICO is an analysis of risk of timely payments, and past derogs are primary indicators of future timely payment risk.

Having paid timely does not directly offest past derogs, and contribution of continued timely payment shows primarily, and very slowly, under aging of the accuonts.

Scoring of payment history first places your overal history into a category, or "bucket," based primarily on whether you still have major derogs.   Until free of major derogs, such as 90+ lates, COs and collections, score improvment in that critical category is difficult. 

Once free of reported major derogs, your categori\ation improves, and you will most likely see more movement.

What derogs are still in your CR?

[kkapdolee]

Are you basing this on the MyFICO score watch based on EQ?

If so, I think the FICO 04 Classic version penalizes short account history much more heavily than other FICO versions do.

For example, my EQ FICO 04 score has been stuck in the mid to high 600 range for over a year while my FICO 08 Classic scores have been climbing above 760. I had no idea until my recently app spree that my score was even over 700 but it happened.

You might want to purchase  the EX score from MyFICO to see what that score says. That one is FICO 08 Classic. You may find it to be much higher than your EQ 04 score.

[blondy250]

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@Kratos-TM wrote:

To gain points, all cards have to have zero balance except one. The one with a balance has to be about 2-4% of its total limit.

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This is only a "trick" to play if your looking for a mortgage or auto loan, or for fine tuning your scores. They're many ways to in the long term to increase your FICO scores most have been mentioned (ontime payment history, low utilization, number of accounts, average age of accounts, and NO derogatory marks and or public collections.