topic Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740 in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 18:45:54 GMT

I just got my 3 bureau report update from myfico, been tracking for the last 3 months. And my Fico 2 seems to be lagging my other scores and I'm not sure if it's reporting or the model. I need a 740 Experian for a TD HELOC which I'll roll most of the cc debt into.

My 8 scores are :

EX 796 TU 773 EX 775

5, 4, 2 are:

EX 757 TU 757 EX 722

I have 4 cards with balances all others at zero. Total credit utilization is at 20% and dropping as all my CCs are 0% balance transfers or 0% intro. Utilization is at 50% for one, 75% another, 34% another, and 22% on the other. The statement closing and reporting is approaching for the 50, 75, and 22. There is one card that on my report last reported with a $9 balance but that is on a $15,000 limit. No delinquency, never a late payment, mix of student loans, mortgage, and personal. So CC debt and utilization is the only thing I have to work with.

Could there be something with experian that is just getting weighted differently? Like that $9 balance? Can I expect a jump with paying down the 3 cards that are about to report? One card is a Chase and I could maybe move some available credit from other cards to lower the utilization on the one below 30%. Just trying to see if I need to make some moves or maybe just wait a week or two for The others to report and rescore?

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Thomas_Thumb — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 18:09:22 GMT

It's all about # cards reporting balances and utilization both in aggregate and on individual cards.

1) Consider paying down one of those 4 cards to zero and reducing the UT on the one card from 75% to 68% and then looking at the impact.

2) Alternatively, start by bringing all card utilizations below 49.5% and then checking score. Then, if more points are still needed, pay the card with the smallest balance to zero.

Personally, I'd go with approach #2.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 18:55:45 GMT

Thanks for the insight. Due to cash flow option 2 would be my approach. The 50% card with go under 49.5 with the next payment. It wil be tougher to do that as quickly with the 75.

I guess my biggest issue it that with the jump I had seen in my 8 score for experian over the previous periods I thought there would be a simulate correlation to this one. 8 went from 737 to 753 to 775, and 2 went from 694 to 719 to 722. So, I was wondering if maybe there could be a lag in reporting or the modeling to account for the only 3 point raise this time. I was expecting an exact amount, but certainly more than 3 points since TU and EX had much larger improvements this period.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

SouthJamaica — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 22:44:13 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I just got my 3 bureau report update from myfico, been tracking for the last 3 months. And my Fico 2 seems to be lagging my other scores and I'm not sure if it's reporting or the model. I need a 740 Experian for a TD HELOC which I'll roll most of the cc debt into.

My 8 scores are :
EX 796 TU 773 EX 775
5, 4, 2 are:
EX 757 TU 757 EX 722

I have 4 cards with balances all others at zero. Total credit utilization is at 20% and dropping as all my CCs are 0% balance transfers or 0% intro. Utilization is at 50% for one, 75% another, 34% another, and 22% on the other. The statement closing and reporting is approaching for the 50, 75, and 22. There is one card that on my report last reported with a $9 balance but that is on a $15,000 limit. No delinquency, never a late payment, mix of student loans, mortgage, and personal. So CC debt and utilization is the only thing I have to work with.

Could there be something with experian that is just getting weighted differently? Like that $9 balance? Can I expect a jump with paying down the 3 cards that are about to report? One card is a Chase and I could maybe move some available credit from other cards to lower the utilization on the one below 30%. Just trying to see if I need to make some moves or maybe just wait a week or two for The others to report and rescore?

Reducing your utilization and getting as many of your cards down to zero will help.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

jamie123 — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 00:49:14 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I just got my 3 bureau report update from myfico, been tracking for the last 3 months. And my Fico 2 seems to be lagging my other scores and I'm not sure if it's reporting or the model. I need a 740 Experian for a TD HELOC which I'll roll most of the cc debt into.

My 8 scores are :
EX 796 TU 773 EX 775
5, 4, 2 are:
EX 757 TU 757 EX 722

I have 4 cards with balances all others at zero. Total credit utilization is at 20% and dropping as all my CCs are 0% balance transfers or 0% intro. Utilization is at 50% for one, 75% another, 34% another, and 22% on the other. The statement closing and reporting is approaching for the 50, 75, and 22. There is one card that on my report last reported with a $9 balance but that is on a $15,000 limit. No delinquency, never a late payment, mix of student loans, mortgage, and personal. So CC debt and utilization is the only thing I have to work with.

Could there be something with experian that is just getting weighted differently? Like that $9 balance? Can I expect a jump with paying down the 3 cards that are about to report? One card is a Chase and I could maybe move some available credit from other cards to lower the utilization on the one below 30%. Just trying to see if I need to make some moves or maybe just wait a week or two for The others to report and rescore?

IMHO all of your scores would be above 800 if you lowered your utilization. Utilization per card and overall is too high.

FICO has several built in dings for some of the usage that you are reporting. You don't mention how many cards that you have, just the 4 with balances. Here are some of the dings you might be getting:

You get a ding if more than 50% of your cards report a balance.
Reporting 75% UTI on a card is a hard ding
Reporting 50% UTI on a card is a hard ding
Reporting 34% UTI on a card is a ding
Reporting even $1 on a card is the same as that card reporting up to 9% of its CL in most cases. If it should be reporting $0 it needs to report $0. In other words, yes, that $9 matters.

My suggestions:

The 75% and 50% UTI cards are hurting your scores the most. If you can get those below 50% you would pick up points.
Then work at getting as close to AZEO as you can by paying the card off with the lowest balance first.

Good luck!

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 00:55:00 GMT

@jamie123 wrote:
IMHO all of your scores would be above 800 if you lowered your utilization. Utilization per card and overall is too high.

If by all scores you're referring to his 8s which are in the 770s, I agree... but I don't think that would be the case with his mortgage scores referenced in the original post. With overall utilization at 20%, he'd only be crossing 1 major aggregate threshold. Reducing individual balances would help a little more, but I wouldn't imagine more than 30 or so points would be picked up.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

jamie123 — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 00:56:47 GMT

@SouthJamaica just posted on his thread something that clarifies the point that I was trying to make about individual card utilization. SouthJamaica posted:

I knew that having a maxed out individual account utilization situation was bad, but I didn't realize how bad. One card just went from 89% to 48%, and EX FICO 8 jumped 26 points. It no doubt would have been even higher had not several other cards increased their utilization significantly the same day.

Good luck and thanks SouthJamaica!

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 05:45:15 GMT

EX2 likes to see zeros. Pay the $9 to $0, get the 2 highest under 50% like TT said and if you can get any more to zero do so.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 17:59:31 GMT

Thanks everyone. Yeah I think that $9 balance maybe throwing things off with EX compared to EF and TU. Having another 0 account and getting to below 50 on the other will hopefully give the boost I'm looking for.

Earlier someone had asked about total cards, I have 12 cards that show up on my report. 1 from Citi and 1 from Chase do not get reported to any bureau and 2 of those 12 don't report to TU. Doesn't really matter as EX2 is the only one I'm concerned with. So 12 cards, 4 with balances all others at zero.

I'm hoping once the reporting happens for a few of those cards in the next few days I might see the change I was looking for. I had a credit line increase on the 20% without a hard pull which will help and then maybe move some credit around again to get below 34% on the other if I need to before the next report date for that.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Thomas_Thumb — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 18:41:05 GMT

Just so you know ... revolving credit useage affects score based on absolute balances in $$ terms as well as % utilization. Increasing account CLs can help reduce utilization but, ultimately revolving balances in aggregate matter as well.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 22:06:32 GMT

I thought about that too and looked into it. Luckily I have a couple of cards that will increase limits with soft pulls and increased some lines today to help with utilization. Statements close at the end of the week so just a wait and see until then.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 00:20:40 GMT

Yeah 4 out of 12 is a little high for EX2. You would see more gains if you saw more zeros. So if this doesn’t get you where you need to be, you know what you have to do. Keeping in mind aggregate balances matter as well, like TT said.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 03:30:16 GMT

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean when referencing aggregate balances?

Also would I be better served if I balance transfered two cards into one, even if the new utilization on the card was high, like 75% or more?

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

SouthJamaica — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 03:40:42 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean when referencing aggregate balances?

Also would I be better served if I balance transfered two cards into one, even if the new utilization on the card was high, like 75% or more?

You absolutely do not want to have any single card with reported utilization greater than 28%.

Re: Help with FICO 2 to 740

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 06:00:40 GMT

@Anonymous Aggregate revolving balance means the total dollar amount owed on all revolving accounts. That is tracked in addition to individual and aggregate revolving utilization, which is a percentage derived from revolving balances divided by revolving credit limits, either individually or in the aggregate.

no you definitely don't want any high utilization cards do you want to keep utilization low individually and in the aggregate the aggregate is more important.