topic Re: Question about Fico Msg Red Flag in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Question about Fico Msg Red Flag

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:21:12 GMT

I get a red flag naughty notation (see below) when I pull my CR. Does anyone know how low it has to be in order to make this baddie go away? I thought I was doing pretty well at 10%. (Of course Amex hasn't reported my PIF yet.)

Thanks!

You've made heavy use of your available revolving credit. Ratio of your revolving balances to your credit limits
10%For FICO High Achievers, this ratio is 7%, on average.

Your FICO score evaluates your total revolving credit balances in relation to your total credit limits on those accounts. In your case, this ratio of balances to credit limits is too high.

Keep this in mind: This credit usage ratio is one of the most important factors to your FICO score, so you should work on paying down your balances. Your FICO score looks at the ratio of revolving debt, but not in which accounts the debt resides. Therefore, consolidating or moving your debt from one account to another will usually not help your FICO score since the same total amount is owed.

Re: Question about Fico Msg Red Flag

haulingthescoreup — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:55:52 GMT

Do you have any other things that you're being scolded for? FICO gets pretty desperate for negatives once your reports start getting clean.

MV has a classic where he got a thumbs-up for his credit history, and his wife got a thumbs-down for the identical figures. (It might have been the other way around.) On TU I was getting my length of history as a positive until an extra account reported, and now suddenly the same history is a negative. * snort *

Re: Question about Fico Msg Red Flag

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:06:36 GMT

haulingthescoreup wrote:
Do you have any other things that you're being scolded for? FICO gets pretty desperate for negatives once your reports start getting clean.

MV has a classic where he got a thumbs-up for his credit history, and his wife got a thumbs-down for the identical figures. (It might have been the other way around.) On TU I was getting my length of history as a positive until an extra account reported, and now suddenly the same history is a negative. * snort *

Yeah, I'm thinking the FICO gods should be on mood stablizers. Last month I got the "old collection" in the green column, as well as "delinquency+collection" as a red. Today, the greenie for "old collection" is gone.. Wait, this might be easier..

12/28/07

Reds:

1. Del+Coll

2. Bad Payment History

3. High Credit Usage (10%)

4. Short Account History (oldest 17, avg 5)

Greens:

1. Long Revolving (17 years)

2. Old Collection (3 years)

1/5/08

Reds:

1. Del+Coll

2. Bad Payment History

3. High Credit Usage (10%)

4. High Account Balances (non-mtg 16k)

Greens:

1. Established Credit History

2. Established Revolving Credit History

So, maybe there's a tattoo on my foot that says "must have 4 reds and 2 greens". No new accounts today on TU. No updates. No inq. Silly Fico.

Re: Question about Fico Msg Red Flag

Anonymous — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:12:47 GMT

AH HA!

I did find ONE change. My TU report from 12/28 showed TWO inq, the oldest set to expire on Jan 13, 2008. Well on today's it is gone -- a whopping 8 days early!

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to add that I saw a +3 from that inq going bye-bye.

Message Edited by WhirledPeasPlease on 01-05-2008 10:12 PM

Re: Question about Fico Msg Red Flag

smallfry — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:00:12 GMT

Get the 10 down to 9 and poof it will be gone.