paid off credit card

[Anonymous]

Paid of credit card and have zero balance on all 4 cards  . I have 2 auto loans and nothing else .  No collections or late payments ever 27 year old and credit score is only 660 and went down 13 points on Equifax after paid off credit card. My house is paid for built it with cash ,i just use credit for buying new trucks and toys, but i cant get a toy with that low of score. how can i get my score up ? My account avergae lenght is only 3 year .  ive had a total of 22 acounts on my credit mostly auto loans.

[jdxprs1]

Might consider getting a heloc since your house is paid off.

[rmduhon]

Let one of your cards report a balance between 1 and 9% of that's card's limit. By having all your cards reporting a zero balance your getting penalized.

[Anonymous]

do you know the best company to get a Helco from ? im self employed which makes it tough 

[HeavenOhio]

If you have no other installment loans, you can get a score bump by using the Share Secure Loan technique. The directions are in the first three posts of the thread. Essentially, you open a $500 savings account with Alliant, use it to secure a $500 5-year loan, immediately pay off all but $44 of the loan, and spend the rest of the 5 years paying off the $44. The cost is a $10 charitable donation to join Alliant and a little under $10 in interest over the five years.

Adding to rmduhon's post above, FICO likes to see one card reporting a small balance. Make sure that balance is at least $5 or so. Some card companies will forgive tiny balances rather than bothering to bill you. The balance should be on a "major" card rather than on a store card. And it should be on a card you "own" rather than on a card where you're an authorized user. Additionally, Chase will report mid-cycle if you pay down to zero (which is generally great). But if you're trying to have exactly one card reporting a small balance, it's probably easier to do with something other than a Chase card.

[DeeBee78]

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@StarkesHerz wrote:

do you know the best company to get a Helco from ? im self employed which makes it tough 

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DCU has amazing HELOC rates that very few lenders would be able to come close to, but a HELOC isn't going to help you any more than a credit card. HELOC reports as a revolving line of credit, and you already have four of those.

Your auto loans are installement loans, so you don't need to open another installement line either. The shared secure loan method is useful to people that do not have an installment account reporting.

Your score can be 780+ without a mortgage loan, so I question what's holding your scores down at 660? Has your new utilization reported? Do you have any collections on your reports, or missed/late payments? Just one of those can bring you scores down 40-50 points for several years. 

[Anonymous]

i have 0 late or missed payments and 0 collections. i have 2 paid tax liens.

[Anonymous]

i have 0 late or missed payments and 0 collections. i have 2 paid tax liens.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@StarkesHerz wrote:

Paid of credit card and have zero balance on all 4 cards  . I have 2 auto loans and nothing else .  No collections or late payments ever 27 year old and credit score is only 660 and went down 13 points on Equifax after paid off credit card. My house is paid for built it with cash ,i just use credit for buying new trucks and toys, but i cant get a toy with that low of score. how can i get my score up ? My account avergae lenght is only 3 year .  ive had a total of 22 acounts on my credit mostly auto loans.

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Not sure why your score is so low if your file is 100% clean. I suspect your score is being held down substantially by # of inquiries less than a year old, # of recent accounts. If aggregate B/L on your car loans is above 9% and one or both of the loans has less than two years payment hiistory, that is hurting your score as well. 

Scores can be in the 720 to 740 range with only two cards, no installment loans, both cards reporting balances, aggregate UT above 9% but below 29% and credit file less than a year old.

Score boosting strategy:

1) Always allow a balance to report on more than 0% of your cards but no more than 50% - (one card only is considered optimal

 - A 15 to 25 point drop in score for zero cards reporting a balance is not unusual (compared to 1 card reporting "a small" balance

2) Balance(s) on cards that do report should be low enough so that aggregate utilization (all cards compined) is less than 9%.

3) Any card that does report a balance should show less than 29% utilization.

4) Reduce (preferrably stop) new account activity and allow existing accounts to "age up". If you don't open any additional new accounts for at least 6 months, you should see a nice bump up in score.

5) It appears like length of payment history on your installment loans is rather short before they are closed - looks like you average over 2 loans a year. On time payment history for longer periods of time may prove helpful.

6) Paying down open installment loans to reduce aggregate B/L ratio to 9% (but keeping a loan or loans open) may boost your score up to 30 points.

Given your situation, gardening is probably the best strategy for organically growing your score.  Not sure how old your existing open auto loans are and what the B/Ls are individually and in aggregate. I would suggest keeping both open but paying down balances to drop aggregate B/L to under 69% or under 29% or under 9% depending on available funds and current B/L level.

P.S. Tax liens whether paid or not have  major impact on Fico 8. Those may be costing you up to 100 points. Only way to address that is to have both removed/deleted from your file. If only one is removed, it won't help much.

[Anonymous]

ok, sounds like the the paid tax leins of $5 and $68 are hurting me, also i like to buy 2 new cars a year which is why so many inquires .