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Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

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haulingthescoreup
Moderator Emerita

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

Hooray for gumshoe! There's someone almost as old as I. No, your personal age wouldn't have anything to do with it. But if your oldest account went one year older, and IF that particular age put you in a new bucket, that might account for it. Same with your average age: if it went up a year, and that happened to be a transition point, you would have wound up in a new bucket.

I got re-bucketed when I went from 12 to 18 years of oldest account. I have no idea where that transition point is: 12 changing to 13 years old (or older), 15 to 16 years, etc. But obviously, somewhere between 12 and 18 there is an credit age that re-assigns you.

That's why I asked about the average age and overall age that you might find on screen 2 of your reports. If one of them had changed, that might have triggered a new bucket. If both of them were the same before your score drop and after, then it must be something else.

BTW, around here, we use bucket changes as our version of voodoo spells. When we can't find anything else to explain a big score change, we fall back on buckets. A few of us with Scorewatch are lucky enough to get alerts so that we know exactly what happened. Everyone else has to go with the voodoo, er, bucket change.
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
Message 11 of 22
haulingthescoreup
Moderator Emerita

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?


@Anonymous wrote:
Gumshoe's problem appears to be the same thing that happen to me. My credit score recently dropped 15 points from 720 to 705 and the only balance increase was a $10 charged on a card I don't use that often that was paid off two weeks later. I hardly see $10 dropping a score 15 points but I am only 24 and my credit history is short. It just feels that I keeping doing everything right and getting punished for little things like this because others in my bucket have credit history of 19 years, that means I would have to have opened my first account when I was 5. Ridiculous expectations!



That does make you pull your hair out, doesn't it?

I doubt that you are in a bucket with those with 19 years or more of credit. Like I said, there are different determinants for your bucket assignment. Yours might be age 5 years or less, or "thin file" (relatively few accounts), or something else that none of us have even thought of. That's the whole point of buckets --you're not being compared to 40 and 50-year-olds half-way through a thirty-year mortgage with a dozen open CC's and another dozen closed. You're being compared with others who match your profile more closely.

Your score drop might well have had nothing to do with a bucket change. For instance, I lost 34 points on TU last week because two CC's reported a balance instead of one. How insane is that? And what really gripes me is that when I had initially gotten only one to report, I had gained 14 points. So that's a net loss of 20 points. I'm waiting to see what I get back if TU ever decides to start reporting again.

What I have to wonder is how much of this seemingly random score movement goes on in the background all the time, and we would never have been aware of it if we hadn't been pulling scores. I try to tell myself that if I'm not actually getting ready to apply for something, it probably doesn't matter. One of those tree falling in the forest with no one to hear things. But it's pretty nerve-wracking if you are in the market for new credit.
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
Message 12 of 22
RobertEG
Legendary Contributor

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

Since most who report drops not related directly to changes in their credit report seem to occur when they reach the low to mid 700's, it would appear that the logical explanation is a bucket change, where they are now being run through a whole different scoring algorithm based upon their movement into the "average" FICO score category, which is also in the low 700's.  Surprise! . FICO is not generated to be Fair, Dear Isaac.  Buckets are aggravating and often illogical, but the principal behind them is sound from the programming point of view, so what we must live with.  Buckets, from a mathematical and conveniience perspective, must be based on broad categories with changeovers, and not linearly incremented.comparisons.  Otherwise the FICO model would be thousands of times longer in program code.  It is business sense,and not simply common sense or fairness to the consumer, that drives much of how the FICO model must operate.  Telling FairIsaac to change their algorithms based on perceived unfairness to the consumer is like telling Donald Trump to take a part time job at McDonalds.


Message Edited by RobertEG on 01-23-2008 07:21 PM
Message 13 of 22
Gigi77
Valued Member

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

Yep- this happened to me as well-- Rebucketted when oldest account hit 13 years this January...
Turning things around..
Message 14 of 22
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

What RobertG said. Smiley Happy
Message 15 of 22
haulingthescoreup
Moderator Emerita

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?



@Gigi77 wrote:
Yep- this happened to me as well-- Rebucketted when oldest account hit 13 years this January...


Thanks, Gigi! This is the first post I have read that was able to identify the year that triggered the re-bucket!

Every little scrap of data we can get...
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
Message 16 of 22
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

So, if we agree that a re-bucketing occurs at 13 years, are there any further buckets to be moved into, say at year 19, or later?
 
If 13 and higher is better than 12 and lower, is there another one, i.e. 19+ is better than 18- ????
Message 17 of 22
MidnightVoice
Super Contributor

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

I didn't notice a sigificant change when I went from 19 to 20
The slide from grace is really more like gliding
And I've found the trick is not to stop the sliding
But to find a graceful way of staying slid
Message 18 of 22
haulingthescoreup
Moderator Emerita

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?


@Anonymous wrote:
So, if we agree that a re-bucketing occurs at 13 years, are there any further buckets to be moved into, say at year 19, or later?
If 13 and higher is better than 12 and lower, is there another one, i.e. 19+ is better than 18- ????



Hmmm, the Discover turns 19 this June. I will need to keep an eye on Scorewatch, assuming that TU's failure to update hasn't driven me over the brink by then.

Good question!
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
Message 19 of 22
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

The exact same thing happended to me, my FICOS went from 756/754/726 in 9-07 to 728/719/697 in 2-08. The biggest drop being 28 pts. With no changes to my  CR's or reason for the FICO drops??? This has dropped my average to far below the magic number of 720.  The lender seemed to think "it may be due to a new FICO scoring system that was supposed to begin in 2008". I have never used this site before now, why is it that this site does not have the answer as to whether a new FICO scoring system has gone into effect or not, & what about the new scoring system can cause an unchanged CR to drop so drastically in FICOS, when no changes have occured to cause the drop?? Is that not what this site specializes in. Where do you suppose we can find these answers??? By the way I came into this site via myfico.com, is this still that?  Also what is a thread, & what is AU??
Thank You!
W H Y
Message 20 of 22
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