@Lechte wrote:
@user5387 wrote:Your utilization is possibly helped in two ways: (1) lower overall utilization, (2) a smaller proportion of cards reporting balances (because of 7 new ones).
AAoA gets hurt, of course, but AAoA is in a FICO category of lesser weight than utilization.
If you avoided hard pulls, they won't ding you, but the new TLs reporting will hurt.
So it might be difficult to figure out the net result of all these changes.
They were all soft pulls. The $2 balance to $0..and the addition of 3 new accounts jumped me 6 pts (according to SW) Previous to those 2 occurences...3 new accounts jumped me 10 pts. Your point of "a smaller proportion of cards reporting balances" is probably the key to the score hike, but ...16 pt jump?... considering all the new TL's and about a year and a half AAOA drop?
It's entirely possible that a nice round number like 25% might be a breakpoint for you.
Also AAoA dings are pretty overstated in my personal opinion for a whole lot of people, it is a minor component in the FICO score and while I fully agree one shouldn't necessarily abuse it, if you only dropped a year and a half from call it 4 and change to 3 and change or at worst case 2 and change (depends where you were on the rounding) you didn't get kicked back down to one year, and the biggest change in AAoA is going from 1 year to 2 years.
Diminishing returns from there on out, so while I am a little surprised at your bump too, it's at least conceivable.
If you don't mind doing a test in the name of "science" try letting your utilization report back at that 26 level again and see if you lose the points.
Oh also, if you had a bunch of accounts reporting balances and now have a much lower percentage (less than half) that might factor too.
@Lechte wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@Lechte wrote:
@user5387 wrote:Your utilization is possibly helped in two ways: (1) lower overall utilization, (2) a smaller proportion of cards reporting balances (because of 7 new ones).
AAoA gets hurt, of course, but AAoA is in a FICO category of lesser weight than utilization.
If you avoided hard pulls, they won't ding you, but the new TLs reporting will hurt.
So it might be difficult to figure out the net result of all these changes.
They were all soft pulls. The $2 balance to $0..and the addition of 3 new accounts jumped me 6 pts (according to SW) Previous to those 2 occurences...3 new accounts jumped me 10 pts. Your point of "a smaller proportion of cards reporting balances" is probably the key to the score hike, but ...16 pt jump?... considering all the new TL's and about a year and a half AAOA drop?
It's entirely possible that a nice round number like 25% might be a breakpoint for you.
Also AAoA dings are pretty overstated in my personal opinion for a whole lot of people, it is a minor component in the FICO score and while I fully agree one shouldn't necessarily abuse it, if you only dropped a year and a half from call it 4 and change to 3 and change or at worst case 2 and change (depends where you were on the rounding) you didn't get kicked back down to one year, and the biggest change in AAoA is going from 1 year to 2 years.
Diminishing returns from there on out, so while I am a little surprised at your bump too, it's at least conceivable.
If you don't mind doing a test in the name of "science" try letting your utilization report back at that 26 level again and see if you lose the points.
Oh also, if you had a bunch of accounts reporting balances and now have a much lower percentage (less than half) that might factor too.
Before the 6 new accounts reported....I had 6 revolving accounts. 5 open, 1 closed. 3 of the 5 were reporting a balance. Now it is 9 open, 3 closed...2 reporting a balance.
Yeah, that's a ding under FICO's algorithm (for whatever reason, not sure I understand that one personally but they have lots of data to support it). In my case I don't see a difference if I have between 1-3 accounts report a balance out of 8, if I get to 4 I lose some but my file is pretty awkward so I don't lose much on random negative factors at this point.