My score hasn't improved significantly?

[Anonymous]

My three scores from transunion, experian and equifax have been stagnate for the past 2 months. I recently stopped applying for credit cards since I have 17 now and they won't give me anymore. Anyways, I'll check my score every 3 weeks and there hasn't been a change to any of my scores. I've paid my credit cards and added more to my bills since but nothing. My scores are as followed TU 713 EX 695 EQ 688. 

[Teo]

Are you carrying a balance on any of the cards, and if so how much?  I'm still in the rebuilding stage myself, but I would guess that (assuming you are not carrying debt) closing some of the newer cards, combined with gardening for a number of months would give you a boost.

[Anonymous]

Hi Daisy.  So glad you are here.  A few thoughts:

*  You mention that you have 17 credit cards and the only reason you wouldn't be apply for still more is that issuers now refuse to give you any.  Have you thought about checking in mentally and asking yourself "Why am I doing this?  What compulsions drove me to need 17 (!) credit cards and to want still more?"  Having that many cards is completely unnecessary.  You stopped getting any scoring benefit from adding more cards after having three or four. 

*  You don't give the folks who might read your post enough information to answer your question.  For example, they don't know how many of your cards are showing a $0 balance, whether all of your cards are < 29% of their individual credit limits, and whether your total utilization is small (1-8%). 

You do tell us that you have "paid your bills", but that only prevents you from getting lates and other derogs.  A person can always pay her bills and still have high CC utilizations, lots of cards reporting with positive balance, etc.  Letting us know what balances are appearing on the credit reports themselves is important. 

If you don't have a free tool that lets you pull your reports (not scores but reports), I suggest you get one.  Credit Karma is a good start, though you should use it only for the actual reports.  (You can ignore the scores and what CK's summary software tells you about your account age.)  CK will let you pull both your EQ and TU reports as often as once a week.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hi Daisy.  So glad you are here.  A few thoughts:

*  You mention that you have 17 credit cards and the only reason you wouldn't be apply for still more is that issuers now refuse to give you any.  Have you thought about checking in mentally and asking yourself "Why am I doing this?  What compulsions drove me to need 17 (!) credit cards and to want still more?"  Having that many cards is completely unnecessary.  You stopped getting any scoring benefit from adding more cards after having three or four. 

*  You don't give the folks who might read your post enough information to answer your question.  For example, they don't know how many of your cards are showing a $0 balance, whether all of your cards are < 29% of their individual credit limits, and whether your total utilization is small (1-8%). 

You do tell us that you have "paid your bills", but that only prevents you from getting lates and other derogs.  A person can always pay her bills and still have high CC utilizations, lots of cards reporting with positive balance, etc.  Letting us know what balances are appearing on the credit reports themselves is important. 

If you don't have a free tool that lets you pull your reports (not scores but reports), I suggest you get one.  Credit Karma is a good start, though you should use it only for the actual reports.  (You can ignore the scores and what CK's summary software tells you about your account age.)  CK will let you pull both your EQ and TU reports as often as once a week.

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I am actually planning on getting more cards once my inquiries have fallen off. I have 1% for total utilization and around $500 that I keep as a balance on cards that have 0% interest and promotional deffered interest which is walmart, home depot, care credit and BOA. I've noticed that my credit score hasn't improved ever since I stopped applying for more cards. With every card that I've recieved, my score has improved. I started at 500 something 5 months ago because I had no credit. I now have 17 credit cards and my score has improved significantly. However, since I can't apply anymore, meaning no credit card company wants to offer me anymore cards. My scores have stayed the same. I'm trying for 750s across my three scores. I do pull my credit report and scores from the ACTUAL companys. I normally use experian. Anyways, I know most people think I'm crazy for applying for so many cards but I love it. It has only helped me improve my scores. I don't have any late payments and what I owe to the companies, I have money in the bank for but I wanted to see if it helps my score to keep a balance. It hasn't really helped. I've paid some off and added more on and nothing has made my score jumped any further.

[Anonymous]

Hey Daisy!  I encourage you to start another thread at some point to discuss whether adding more cards beyond five could ever in itself cause a person's FICO score to go up, assuming the person keeps her utilization low with most cards at a $0 balance.  I think you'll find that the veterans here will tell you it's not possible. 

It is quite possible that a person's score could go up at the same time that her number of cards went from 5, 6. 7, ... but that's very different from the increase in cards causing the score increase.  An association in time isn't the same is a cause-effect relationship.  Scientists call this the difference between a temporal association and a causal one.  For example, it might be very warm up till 6am, and then a cold front begins to move through; although it is true that as the sun rose and began beating down on the earth, it got colder and colder, until by 2 pm it was much colder, the sun didn't cause the temperature to get cold.

A person's utilization going down can cause a score increase.  So can a shift from most of the cards having a positive balance to most having a $0 balance.  (Both things might happen around the same time that a person added more cards.)  But you can achieve a low utilization with most cards reporting $0 and so so with only 4-5 cards very easily if you want.  There are many other things that might have been coincidentally causing your score to go up -- derogs falling off or becoming more distant, age of oldest account increasing, credit mix improving, amounts owed on installment loans going down, etc.

Of course this is just my perspective.  That's why it would be good to bring it up to the broader community in a dedicated post to see what other people think.

I do note that you mention that acquiring lots of cards has just given you a huge amount of pleasure.  It might be worth focusing on that.  Just checking in with yourself to see whether you are making credit/finance decisions based in part on emotional thrill.  There's risk in doing that.  My feeling is that movies are a great place to experience emotions at almost no risk -- finances are a more dangerous place to do it.

A final thought: credit scores are worth pursuing solely for the leverage that they give you to persuade lenders to give you great rates on a mortgage, a car etc.  What you have explained is that lenders are looking at your profile and actively refusing to give you credit -- they are basically going whoa, bad news!  That's the opposite of what you should be wanting, and it should be a sign that something isn't right.  Again, just my opinion.

[Anonymous]

OP, do you have any negative items at all on your credit reports?

[DrZoidberg]

17 newish cards and it's only been 2 months. What are you expecting? It took me 5+ years to get over 800.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My three scores from transunion, experian and equifax have been stagnate for the past 2 months. I recently stopped applying for credit cards since I have 17 now and they won't give me anymore. Anyways, I'll check my score every 3 weeks and there hasn't been a change to any of my scores. I've paid my credit cards and added more to my bills since but nothing. My scores are as followed TU 713 EX 695 EQ 688. 

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Strategy for raising your scores:

1. Stop applying for new cards. No more inquiries & new accounts.

2. Let most of your cards report at zero balance.

3. Let cards which do report a balance report at 9% of limit or less.

4. Maintain installment loans at 9% of loan amount or less, but do not pay down to zero.

[Anonymous]

Another question for the OP, what is your AAoA?  How old is your oldest account?  When did you get your first CC, when did you get your last, and the time in between were your apps spread out or were they in sprees and if so, when were the sprees?

You may actually benefit from closing some of these accounts that may have been impusive that you won't actually use much or at all.  Of the 17 accounts, if you opened up about half last year and about half this year for example, if you closed some of the newer ones and requested that the trade lines get deleted since they are so new, your AAoA could improve.  You could go from < 1 year AAoA to > 1 year AAoA for example which would actually help your scores.  Just a consideration.

[Grafton88]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My three scores from transunion, experian and equifax have been stagnate for the past 2 months. I recently stopped applying for credit cards since I have 17 now and they won't give me anymore. Anyways, I'll check my score every 3 weeks and there hasn't been a change to any of my scores. I've paid my credit cards and added more to my bills since but nothing. My scores are as followed TU 713 EX 695 EQ 688. 

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Daisy,

One of the things I have learn in building my credit is that it is very important to understand the cause and effect of each account I have made.  My FICO 8 scores in early August were between 770 and 780.  I added a car lease and one more CC.  My scores dropped 20-30 points with those 2 new accounts.  The reason was that I added 5 more INQs and dropped my AAoA from 10 months to 7 months.  To get those points back I will go into the garden.  I will be pro-active by being inactive.

I have found that with my thin file every small move I make leads to a big change.  People with long established credit lives can add new things with little change.  I hope to be there in 5 - 10 years.  In the mean time I am taking it slow.  I hope to buy a house next year.  I have no plans to add any other accounts.  Little by little.