topic Re: What is the best simulator? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

What is the best simulator?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 14:28:33 GMT

What is the best (or at least, least bad) simulator?

I used a simulator recently and it said if I get a mortgage my score will drop 60 points...I'm pretty sure that isn't accurate. Any good ones out there?

Re: What is the best simulator?

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 16:32:58 GMT

Chase and Credit Karma have simulators that can give you "fair" ball park numbers.

Re: What is the best simulator?

FireMedic1 — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 17:08:45 GMT

The best simulators are the members here on the forum. Simulators are useless. Post all your stats (scores,accounts,ect) over at the mortgage section and the experts there can help ya out.

Re: What is the best simulator?

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 02:53:03 GMT

I agree 100% with the post above. Take any 5 well-versed members of this forum and get their opinions and those opinions will make any simulator go cry in the corner.

Keep in mind that no simulator takes into consideration your actual profile data and it's profile data that's used to generate a score. How can any simulator be trusted to give a prediction on your score change when it's not even using your CR data the way a scoring algorithm would?

At least when you ask the members of this forum, they'll ask for your profile data and consider it in a way as close to how they feel an algorithm would and many times provide you with a pretty darn solid estimate.

Re: What is the best simulator?

NRB525 — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 04:33:07 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
What is the best (or at least, least bad) simulator?

I used a simulator recently and it said if I get a mortgage my score will drop 60 points...I'm pretty sure that isn't accurate. Any good ones out there?

What is your score? Where is that score from?

Which simulator did you look at?

It is unlikely a mortgage would be that bad of an effect, because it is a different type of credit from revolving credit cards. In any event, the purpose of a mortgage is to buy a place to live, so the intent is to get an optimized score going in to the app, to get the mortgage, not to worry about what your score does after the mortgage begins to report.

Re: What is the best simulator?

Pikaboo-icu — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 05:49:32 GMT

Welcome to My Fico..

No simulator is very accurate, just too many variables..

But here's a link to the best one I've found:

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/bd-p/ficoscoring

Re: What is the best simulator?

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 14:30:56 GMT

It was a vantage 3.0 from TU (on creditwise from captial one) that had my score like that...those always have my score lower.

3 mortgage are: 694, 705, 715

Then the non Fico is 631...Fico 8s are 664-691 (so my mortgage scores are actually a little higher).

Vantage 3.0 is 631

I tried plugging in different numbers for the mortgages...100k up to 400k I think...and it might have changed one point...

I have around 12,500 in cc debt, nothing else. No lates or anything derogatory (except too many inquiries from around 6 months ago)

When i do the calculator with a mortgage while still having my cc debt it goes down 23 points. When I do the calculator with my cc debt paid off and the mortgage it goes down 96 points....

Doesn't make any sense to me.

Re: What is the best simulator?

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:50:36 GMT

Yup, doesn't make sense because simulators are trash, period end of story!

Re: What is the best simulator?

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 19:13:15 GMT

Even the simulator on myFICO is worthless. That should tell you how worthless they really are.

Re: What is the best simulator?

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Jan 2019 21:49:14 GMT

Do you have an AMEX, and if so have you tried the simultulator on your profile on their? Im curious how it compares to others you have tried, as i use it alot, and have found it to be somewhat accurate within a few points. I put it to the test a few months ago, i simulated paying off a card, then did it, and it was only off by 3 points (simulated a 712 and i actually went to 709).

Re: What is the best simulator?

Anonymous — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 09:16:40 GMT

It just got lucky then. Paying off a card could raise a FICO score 0 points or 100 points (or anywhere in between) based on the profile data. Profile data of course that the simulator does not have access to.

Re: What is the best simulator?

Thomas_Thumb — Sat, 19 Jan 2019 15:44:00 GMT

The Credit Karma (VantageScore) and MyFico simulators do use the profile data they have on record as a baseline for simulations. In the case of CK, it uses your Transunion data. The only time I had access to the MyFico simulator was when I purchase a report and access was only for 30 days as I recall.

A primary drawback of simulators is the limited number of factors they can look at in a "what if" scenario. For example, if you have $20k in credit card debt and pay off $15k, the simulator does not ask for how much pay down on what card(s). Therefore the simulator cannot properly account for # of cards with balances or individual card utilizations - only aggregate utilization.

For profiles with multiple derogatories such as lates and collections, the simulators lack the ability to analyze impact of changes in specific subsets of the delinquencies. Thus, their accuracy becomes even more unreliable in these cases. Here is what I see adding lates on CK: Whats up with the VS3 score boost at 90 days?

# accts late	no lates	1 month	2 months	3 months
1	826	732	713	741
all	826	674	627	693

The aggregate credit card balance (utilization) simulation is more insightful and somewhat accurate based on comparing to my actual VS3 results. I can't recall if MyFico has a total CC balance simulator.

I still see that same score spike but, this time peak score is around 5.5% vs 4.7% for a simulation last year. Unfortunately, my high score potential has also dropped 4 points (due to fewer total accts?)

Ag Utilization	VS 3 Score	Ag Utilization	VS 3 Score
0.00%	829	10.55%	824
0.03%	829	10.92%	823
0.40%	829	11.65%	822
0.77%	829	12.21%	821
0.96%	827	13.13%	820
2.07%	826	13.50%	819
2.63%	825	14.62%	817
3.70%	824	15.54%	816
4.44%	823	16.28%	814
5.04%	822	17.39%	812
5.74%	831	18.32%	810
6.11%	830	19.43%	808
6.66%	830	20.37%	806
7.26%	829	23.31%	800
8.33%	827	24.98%	796
9.25%	826	27.76%	789
9.62%	825	30.91%	783