topic Re: Achieving 850 CS in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 16:32:21 GMT

Currently I'm sitting at 805 accross the boad with 4 years 7 months of AAoA and 1% CU and a 65k limit. My question is... how do I get it to 850? I've done my research as my credit is really important to me but I'm guess I'm missing the secret because I've been stuck at 805 for some time now.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Kree — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:13:45 GMT

What is your AoOA?

What is your AoYA?

Do you have one or more installment account?

If yes, what is your installment UTI?

Also, where are you getting your scores from?

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:20:34 GMT

My AooA is 10Y 4 Months and my AoYA is several weeks as I just opened a new card but prior to that 1Y 8 months.

I currently have 2 installment accounts that are my house and (1) vehicle.

I'm pulling my scores from credit karma.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

jlitnns — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:38:03 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
My AooA is 10Y 4 Months and my AoYA is several weeks as I just opened a new card but prior to that 1Y 8 months.

I currently have 2 installment accounts that are my house and (1) vehicle.

I'm pulling my scores from credit karma.

When was the last time you pulled a FICO from a reputable source? ie NOT Credit Karma.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

arkane — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 17:51:30 GMT

Credit Karma gives you useless Vantage Scores that nobody uses and is at best good for keeping track of trends. Definitely get your FICO scores from somewhere -- your banks may even offer one for free depending on who you're with.

Cheapest way to get all 3 FICO scores in one shot is to sign up for the $1 CreditCheckTotal trial. Just remember to cancel your membership within 7 days so you don't get charged the montly $29.95 membership fee.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

SouthJamaica — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 18:14:41 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
My AooA is 10Y 4 Months and my AoYA is several weeks as I just opened a new card but prior to that 1Y 8 months.

I currently have 2 installment accounts that are my house and (1) vehicle.

I'm pulling my scores from credit karma.

Easy.

1. Stop applying for things.

2. Pay your installment accounts down but not to zero, preferably paying vehicle loan down to 9%

3. Maintain your revolving account statement balances at all zero but one, with the one small.

4. Stop paying attention to your Vantage scores, which are meaningless.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 18:52:00 GMT

802 Ex

803 Eq

826 TU

I just pulled all 3 from reputable site.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

NRB525 — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 20:15:32 GMT

OP, some additional questions;

What is the age of your mortgage and principal remaining vs beginning balance?

Same for the auto loan, current bal vs starting and age.

How many credit cards?

How many of them report a balance?

Is at least one card reporting an actual statement balance consistently?

Just to confirm, you have no, none, never any lates, correct?

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 21:13:07 GMT

I'm 5 years into a 30 year. Starting was 180k I'm now down to 160k~

Auto is 5 year starting at 59k and now down to 44k with 3.5 years remaining.

5 CCs and all 5 report.

One card typically has <1k

Never any lates

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 22:14:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
My AooA is 10Y 4 Months and my AoYA is several weeks as I just opened a new card but prior to that 1Y 8 months.

You might have been using Karma to assess your AoOA (Age of Oldest Account). Karma's summary page ignores closed accounts, but FICO counts them. If you have a closed account that is older, use that instead.

Good advice from the other folks.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 22:37:53 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Currently I'm sitting at 805 accross the boad with 4 years 7 months of AAoA and 1% CU and a 65k limit. My question is... how do I get it to 850? I've done my research as my credit is really important to me but I'm guess I'm missing the secret because I've been stuck at 805 for some time now.

One thing you may want to research a bit further is whether the very goal of an 850 is worthwhile -- if the driving concern is having good credit.

There is no credit product on the market (loan, credit card, etc.) where the lender will give you better terms once you have achieved scores of 780. No better chance of approval, no better interest rate, no higher credit limit, etc. The guy with the 835 gets no advantage over the guy with the 782.

Moreover a perfect 850 is difficult to obtain and maintain if you think you will actually be using the high score. Think of it like a beautiful plate. The only way to keep it 100% pretty and spotless at all times is never to actually use it -- never dirty it with steak or mashed potatoes or whatever. (There's a small invisible buffer at the top that allows some people with an 850 to open an account without taking a drop, but this is not the norm.)

A goal of having a score that varies between the 820s and 840s, by way of contrast, is quite consistent with getting to open accounts -- like having the beautiful plate but still using it to eat food.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Thomas_Thumb — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 01:32:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm 5 years into a 30 year. Starting was 180k I'm now down to 160k~
Auto is 5 year starting at 59k and now down to 44k with 3.5 years remaining.

5 CCs and all 5 report.
One card typically has <1k
Never any lates

Report a balance on one or two cards only. That will boost your score a bit on its own. Keep your overall utilization under 9% (more preferrably under 6% to give yourself some headroom) and keep any card that does report a balance under 29%.

Note: Inverse reported scores of 850 with two mortgages and one auto loan. His combined mortgage B/L ratio was just under 64%, his auto loan B/L was about 80% and aggregate "installment" B/L just over 65%.

OP will likely need to get aggregate installment B/L under 70%, AAoA to around 8 years and AoYA to above 12 months for a realistic chance at 850. Maintaining 850 typically translates to a boring credit life. If OP wants to maintain an active credit lifestyle, I'd recommend maintaining membership in the 800 club as a goal and forego 850 as a near term objective.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 04:31:40 GMT

OP, to sort of give you a shooting from the hip answer to your original question (...how long...to 850...) I would say at least 2, likely 3-4 years for you. The main constraints I would say are your AAoA and AoOA. In 3 years if you didn't obtain any new accounts between now and then and you don't have any significantly old accounts fall off your report during that time, your AAoA would be around 6-7 years and your AoOA would be around 13 years. I think those numbers would be about the minimums required to land around 850. Most with 850 have an AoOA of > 17 years and an AAoA of 8+ years from what I've seen.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

NRB525 — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 05:08:32 GMT

CGID points out the reasons to be cautious about striving for 850.

In my interpretation, you have to basically stop borrowing to maintain 850, which is really a measure of zero risk of default. That is fine as a goal, but not a goal I have.

I prefer to get a little bacon grease on my plate. Mmmmm... Bacon....

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 15:56:58 GMT

@NRB525 wrote:
In my interpretation, you have to basically stop borrowing to maintain 850, which is really a measure of zero risk of default. That is fine as a goal, but not a goal I have.

While this overall idea is generally true, there are two things that doesn't align with this thought process. One would be the presence of a lone almost paid off installment loan. As we all know, having one of these in place results in a 25-30 point FICO score boost. The same is true if that only installment loan is a mortgage that's been paid on for a good number of years (say, 8-10) but still sits at 60%-70% utilization. In both of these cases, the individual with the open installment loan is "borrowing" relative to an otherwise equal profile that doesn't have either of these open installment loan types. The second would be revolving credit use over no revolving credit use, as indicated by the presence of a small reported balance on a revolving line of credit. In order to report a balance, even if it's a trivial one, a person must technically "borrow" ... where someone that doesn't use their revolvers at all and has them all at $0 balances would see a scoring penalty over the previous person.

I'm quite sure that someone has reported an 850 score without the presence of an open installment loan or with all cards reporting $0 balances, but I'm not sure that someone has reported an 850 score without both of these known score boosters in place, as I'm not sure a buffer could overcome the ~40-50 points possible between the two of them combined?

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 16:05:18 GMT

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:
OP will likely need to get aggregate installment B/L under 70%, AAoA to around 8 years and AoYA to above 12 months for a realistic chance at 850. Maintaining 850 typically translates to a boring credit life. If OP wants to maintain an active credit lifestyle, I'd recommend maintaining membership in the 800 club as a goal and forego 850 as a near term objective.

What's your highest score you've seen with AoYA < 12 months?

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Kree — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 16:11:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Currently I'm sitting at 805 accross the boad with 4 years 7 months of AAoA and 1% CU and a 65k limit. My question is... how do I get it to 850? I've done my research as my credit is really important to me but I'm guess I'm missing the secret because I've been stuck at 805 for some time now.
One thing you may want to research a bit further is whether the very goal of an 850 is worthwhile -- if the driving concern is having good credit.

There is no credit product on the market (loan, credit card, etc.) where the lender will give you better terms once you have achieved scores of 780. No better chance of approval, no better interest rate, no higher credit limit, etc. The guy with the 835 gets no advantage over the guy with the 782.

Moreover a perfect 850 is difficult to obtain and maintain if you think you will actually be using the high score. Think of it like a beautiful plate. The only way to keep it 100% pretty and spotless at all times is never to actually use it -- never dirty it with steak or mashed potatoes or whatever. (There's a small invisible buffer at the top that allows some people with an 850 to open an account without taking a drop, but this is not the norm.)

A goal of having a score that varies between the 820s and 840s, by way of contrast, is quite consistent with getting to open accounts -- like having the beautiful plate but still using it to eat food.

I'd go one step further. Never using the plate gets you to 850, but then you have to take it out every week and dust/polish it. (azeo or similar maintenance). Lots of work for little practical value. Still nice to have though.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 16:14:00 GMT

@Kree wrote:
I'd go one step further. Never using the plate gets you to 850, but then you have to take it out every week and dust/polish it. (azeo or similar maintenance). Lots of work for little practical value. Still nice to have though.

Plus it's weird to me to see folks saying they merely want 850 scores and not aim for the next level beyond 850 (850 + buffer).

If you're going to aim for the top, why not actually aim for the actual top?

It's not like FICO gives people metal credit scores, yet!

Re: Achieving 850 CS

arkane — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 16:17:03 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Kree wrote:
I'd go one step further. Never using the plate gets you to 850, but then you have to take it out every week and dust/polish it. (azeo or similar maintenance). Lots of work for little practical value. Still nice to have though.

Plus it's weird to me to see folks saying they merely want 850 scores and not aim for the next level beyond 850 (850 + buffer).

If you're going to aim for the top, why not actually aim for the actual top?

It's not like FICO gives people metal credit scores, yet!

Shhhhhhh don't give them ideas! At this rate instead of "bad/fair/good/excellent/exceptional" descriptors for scores, we just might get "rusted iron/stainless steel/silver/gold/platinum" instead.

Re: Achieving 850 CS

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 16:31:16 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Kree wrote:
I'd go one step further. Never using the plate gets you to 850, but then you have to take it out every week and dust/polish it. (azeo or similar maintenance). Lots of work for little practical value. Still nice to have though.

Plus it's weird to me to see folks saying they merely want 850 scores and not aim for the next level beyond 850 (850 + buffer).

If you're going to aim for the top, why not actually aim for the actual top?

I think simply because it's very difficult to try and quantify the buffer, where 850 (or any score) is easily visible and finite. When someone sees their score tick up from 846 to 850 for example, they have no way of know if they're really at 850, or if they're at, say 853.