FICO SCORE GOES DOWN 30 TO 40 POINTS

[MarineVietVet]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Another question I have now, is if I had some pre approved offers sent to me when I had a 770, do you think I'll get  a lower CL now that my scores are down.

From EQ 770 to 735.

From TU 752 to 713

EXP 758 to ??????

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I don't think anyone (least of all me) can say for sure. Every issuer looks at things differently.

I might wait a bit though and see if your scores at least level out and/or get better before I'd think about more credit but that's just me.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks MarineVietVet,

I'm confused just dealing with my own posts so I totally understand.  Basically here is how I roll on Fico Scores.  I am a member of several Equifax products.  I get unlimited CRs and I also get Scorewatch updates.  Then I occassionally order the Score Power as well.  My Scorewatch scores have been trending for over 750 for roughly the last year or so.  It had maxed out at about 776 a few months ago and then stabilized at 770.  I went back and looked at my Score Powers from 9/2010 and 7/2011 and here is what I found:

ScorePower Reports:

                                                   September 2010                             October 2010                                                                July 2011

Score                                                  750                                                756                                                                               735

                                                                                                                                                               Note: Two categories improved from 9/2010 but score went down!

Amount of Debt                            Not Good                                            Good                                                                             Good  

New Credit                                   Good                                                   Good                                                                             Very Good

Payment History                          Great                                                   Great                                                                             Great

Length of Credit History               Very Good                                           Very Good                                                                    Very Good

Negative points:        1.  High Credit Usage- 59% Revolving      1. HCU- 48%                                                         1.  High Credit Usage- 44% Revolving ( utilization went down!)

                                  2.  New Account- 8 months                       2. New Acct- 9 mos                                                2.  Amount owed Revolve Too High- $ 11K

Positive points:         1.  No missed payments                           1. No missed pmt                                                                   1.  No missed Payments

                                  2. Long Credit history- 16yrs 5 mos          2.Long crdt hist- 16yr 6mos                                                    2.  Established credit history- 17 yrs 3 mos

                                  3.  Not looking for credit- 1 Inq. last year    3.  Recent credit use                                                  3.  Not looking for credit- 1 Inq last year

Very strange if you asked me. Also, I noticed that the September 2010 Report at the top said Score Power, but the

October 2010 and the July 2011 said Score Watch at the top.  Not sure when that changed.

I think I'm going to order the EQ from My Fico and see what it is.  In the past its always been the same as my Score Watch and Score Power,

but maybe now they are different????? not sure.

I'll post an update.

so you can see I had improvements in several categories, my Revolving util went down but my score went down.

The only major difference was I paid off the installment loan in May 2011.  30 days later my score dropped 35 points from 770 to 735.

Also my TU dropped from 752 (mtg lender pull in April 2011) to 713 here on MyFico.  So maybe this has to do with the TU04 vs TU98 issue.

Any help I can get from you'll would be appreciated. I'd be very interested to hear your feedback.

It certainly looks like paying off that installment loan hurt me big time. I actuall may beed an installment loan and or car loan soon, do you'll think that would actually raise my score???

thanks again.

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OK, I think I see it!!!

With your first two scores, you still had an account that was pretty new. That put you in the "presence of new credit" scorebucket. At some point, it was no longer regarded as new, and you went back to your long history (17-ish years), and your high util is punished much more harshly.

We often think that a new account is automatically painful, but in fact, I found that my scores went up a year or so ago when I got a new card (Costco AmEx, I think.) In my case, my negative factor was presence of old lates, but in your case, it's high util, now followed by high absolute balance. I've seen this pop up for different lengths of time, so I don't think it's automatically credit less than a year old or some hard figure like that.

The purpose of buckets (scorecards is the grown-up name, I think) is to compare credit consumers with others of similar backgrounds. Otherwise, someone brand new to credit, or with two recent lates, would be stuck in the 500's due to being compared with those who have 20 years of perfect history. For those with clean reports, the buckets are driven by age, and the longer the history (as in your case), the tougher the competition in terms of utilization.

Once you get your util down, your scores will pop right back up, maybe even higher. At that point, you might find that the presence of a new account (new score bucket) would hurt your scores, instead of helping as it does (did) now.

Thanks for posting the negatives! The positives are mostly there for warm fuzzies, but the negatives are exactly what the factors are that affect your score, listed in order. Unfortunately myFICO displays fewer and fewer negatives as your score goes higher, so sometimes you have to pull a so-called "slant-12" report from here to see all your negatives.

edited after I went back at looked at my old score reports

[Anonymous]

Dear Hauling,

Thank you so much. That was an awesome analysis and explanation. Now I understand. How far down do I need to get my utilization to see a nice 20 to 30 point increase.

I know ideal is 8 to 9 % but I cant afford that right now.

Thanks again.

[haulingthescoreup]

You're welcome! It was sort of cool to see that collection of factors, because when I saw it happen on my own reports, I thought I'd gone crazy. Sorry, it certainly wasn't cool to see what happened to your scores, though. That was my scoring-formula-nerdiness talking.

As for util, it seems to come in chunks, so to speak. So dropping it 1% might not do anything if you only go from 44% to 43%, for instance, but it might help if you go from 40% to 39%. I don't know if these chunks, or levels, or tiers apply universally, but I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a jump once you went below 30%, and then again below 10%. Again, that's just guessing, though. Maybe shoot for under 40, under 30, etc. Remember that the scoring formula does round up, so 39.00001% (I'm exaggerating, but still) means 40%.

The other alternative, or actually one to use in conjunction, is to get CLI's if you can, but typically lenders don't grant CLI's with high util like yours.

[Anonymous]

What if I get a new CC , will that throw me back into a "new credit presence" and potentially raise my score, or should I try to raise my score first before i get a new card.

One concern I had, was I had a lot of pre approved offers come in when I had the 770 EQ score from Chase Sapphire, Citi Diamond Preferred, Citi Platinum.

Do you think if I applied on those pre approved offers I would get approved with the same type of Cl with my now lower scores or should I wait till I can get my scores back up to apply??

Your thoughts??

[haulingthescoreup]

I hear what you're saying, but my thought is that I'm a chicken about this sort of thing. What if you could only get a crappy card, and you didn't get the score increase again, or the inq cancelled it out or something? Like I said, I'm highly non-adventurous, especially when gritting my teeth and waiting will make the itch fade.

Refresh my memory, are you going for something that will require X FICO score in the next few months? Or is this (very understandably) perturbing you because like everyone else, you hate seeing your score tank? --this is actually relevant, not maternal-type scolding

[Anonymous]

It's a little of both. First to have my score be over 760 for such a long time and then to tank down is very frustrating especially when I did nothing negative.

second I was thinking of getting a Big Bank card with a nice big CL just in case. I'm in commission only business and its nice to have a place for a cash reserve if necessary. i Know its not ideal for a cash reserve but it is what it is.

i received alot of preapproved nice cards, so now I'm worried that because of the score tank, I wont get approved even though I was "preapproved" which I know doesnt mean anything, or I'll get a much lower CL than I would have with a 770 EQ.

So its a little of both.  I may be in need of a personal intallment loan soon, so maybe that will help my credit mix and actually lift the score.

Your advice is much appreciated.

Thanks.