Making on time monthly credit payments; how much does it help

[Anonymous]

Payment history is aproximately 35% of your fico score. Let's diverge into this further. Let's say I had only one credit card for 12 months and always PIF each month. Thats 12 payments on time per year. Great.

Let's say I open 5 more credit cards for a total of 6 credit cards. In year two, I pay each card off on time, and with the new addition of cards I made 72 payments on time in year two, rather than just 12 if I had never opened the additonal cards. Does this impact my "payment history" portion of my fico score in a stronger way? In other words, does making 72/72 payments on time in a year improve my fico score any more than making 12/12 payments in a year on time? Thanks.

[user5387]

I don't know the answer to your specific question, but in general you need more than one card to optimize FICO scoring.

The usual cited number is either two or three, and this fact may tie in with the question you're asking.

Responsible use of unsecured credit demonstrates financial maturity.

[Revelate]

Payment history is king not so much for the number of on-time payments, but the fact that derogatory information is just so painful.  That said, I think it's easy to state that even if the aggregate number of on-time payments, or the ratio of on-time to late don't happen to be calculated, given the way tradeline seasoning and AAoA tend to work, the short answer is that yes, mo tradelines = mo payments = mo bettah.  That's certainly true from an underwriting perspective even if FICO doesn't calculate it individually (which I rather suspect it does).

That said, it's hard to pull out anything measurable, and it's sort of irrelevant anyway as really the method for optimizing FICO scoring is simply to never pay less than the minimum, never pay late, and never miss a payment.  If that's done, utilization and various other things can be taken care of later and on short notice even, ergo payment history is where it's at in the long run.