topic Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This! in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

fused — Sun, 27 May 2007 19:02:50 GMT

I just checked my FICO EX and my score went down 8 points from a 755 to a 747 FOR NO APPARENT REASON. I printed both reports (printed the 755 and save it awhile ago and just printed the 747) and did a side by side analysis and the only difference was my accounts aged two months. Absolutely no lates, no new baddies, nothing dropping off that was positive, no changes on util, no new inq's, cl's the same, no judgments or public records, no new accounts. Just two additional POSITIVE months of payments on time and little more aging! Any ideas, beginning to think FICO has the occasional hiccup!

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

MidnightVoice — Sun, 27 May 2007 19:08:18 GMT

1. EX hates you

2. The moon was waxing when the compter made the calculations.

3. The moon was waning when the computer made its calculations

4. Uranus was in Venus at the time.

5. A butterfly flapped its wings in Japan.

6. The was a power surge in Paris, France.

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

Tuscani — Sun, 27 May 2007 19:53:48 GMT

Seeing that EX hates most people I am going with option 1.

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

girlie — Mon, 28 May 2007 03:22:19 GMT

for the same reason that my eq score went up 16 points with no changes and only increased 5 points when i paid my debt down significantly.....unknown. this is so frustrating sometimes that i obsess trying to figure it all out.

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

Anonymous — Mon, 28 May 2007 04:13:16 GMT

Just a guess. Temp points based on trend. If trend stops, loose the trend points. Totally a guess, nothing to base it upon. The thought just popped in my head.

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

smallfry — Mon, 28 May 2007 04:15:04 GMT

The slight changes month to month might have as much to do with activities by others in the same pool as what you did. I'm beginning to think it pays to take a longer term view of the scoring.

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

MidnightVoice — Mon, 28 May 2007 19:13:29 GMT

I am taking a very long view - I am figuring out where I will be in the summer of 2008

Minor fluctuations don't bother me, I just want to see appropriate increases when I follow the rules and get something right

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

fused — Mon, 28 May 2007 22:00:36 GMT

smallfry wrote:
The slight changes month to month might have as much to do with activities by others in the same pool as what you did. I'm beginning to think it pays to take a longer term view of the scoring.

I have heard some talk about "pools." Has this really been substantiated, or just speculation?

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

Anonymous — Tue, 29 May 2007 01:32:45 GMT

Some call them "pools", some call them "buckets", and I think the official term is "scorecards". The concept does account for a lot of otherwise unexplainable score changes. In a closed-end model (850 max), it seems reasonable that a "grading curve" effect would be part of the formula. If the average of most people in your scorecard group goes up during one month (from actively fixing things), and you are on cruise control (just gathering history since you already fixed everything else), then perhaps your score might take a slight ding because of that.

It's still all based on anecdotal evidence and assumptions - nobody is going to divulge the specifics of the formula.

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

fused — Tue, 29 May 2007 01:41:03 GMT

Revike wrote:
Some call them "pools", some call them "buckets", and I think the official term is "scorecards". The concept does account for a lot of otherwise unexplainable score changes. In a closed-end model (850 max), it seems reasonable that a "grading curve" effect would be part of the formula. If the average of most people in your scorecard group goes up during one month (from actively fixing things), and you are on cruise control (just gathering history since you already fixed everything else), then perhaps your score might take a slight ding because of that.

It's still all based on anecdotal evidence and assumptions - nobody is going to divulge the specifics of the formula.

That is fascinating! I guess my history/math degrees cannot even help here. What you are saying makes perfectly good sense. I am not in credit repair mode mostly just watching my util and paying on time. Always!!! In response to this drop in my EX score, I pushed the amex luv button and received a sizable cli on my Blue card, further lowering my util to about 1.4%. Now if just the **bleep** accounts would start reporting on EX.

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

Anonymous — Tue, 29 May 2007 04:07:22 GMT

@fused111 wrote:

Please post when you get your CLI posted to your CR. I would like to know if it had any effect on your score 0-5 days after posting. Thank you in advanced. :-)

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

Tuscani — Tue, 29 May 2007 11:10:49 GMT

There are different pools aka scorecards or buckets. For example, you may have transitioned from the category "consumers with a new credit history" to the category "consumers with a two- to five-year credit history". As a result, your credit report is evaluated differently, causing a slight change in your score. The good news is that moving between categories like this usually offers you the potential to reach a higher FICO score in the future.

Overall, that's a good thing. Otherwise, newer people just beginning to participate in credit, or those of us working on credit rebuilding, would be locked into basement-level-scores nearly forever compared to all those folks with 30+ years of impeccable credit history.

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

MidnightVoice — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:37:28 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

@fused111 wrote:

Please post when you get your CLI posted to your CR. I would like to know if it had any effect on your score 0-5 days after posting. Thank you in advanced. :-)

I got a new CL Tuesday and it hit EQ on Sunday. (And EQ liked it)

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

Anonymous — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:29:07 GMT

I do not know this for 100% certain. But from what I have been told is that the credit scoring is an ever changing algorithm. I don't think it is a "pool" that you are lumped in with. But people with similar credit characteristics as you may have had a slightly higher default rate recently, thus the minor score drop.

I am a mortgage lender, any time I see 720 plus scores, the minor differences are a non-issue. As a matter of fact, if I get someone approved through the "automated uinderwriting" engine the score does NOT impact the rate (unlike what some people want you to believe). Approved is approved. And a 660 score will almost always get an approval.

You score impacts your car loan and credit card rates more in my opinion.

If I were you I wouldn't stress about the minor fluctuations. If you pay your payments on time and keep your revolving charged under 33% of the limit, you will be just fine..

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

MercyMe — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:41:45 GMT

Can you be flopped smack back into your previous bucket? And as you graduate from one bucket to the next, are higher scores more difficult to achieve? I mean, I received an alert, a while back, that I'd jumped buckets -- but thereafter it seemed awfully difficult to get a score increase. Or perhaps they slung me back into the bucket I was in before when my score dropped? Lord I feel like a fish ... this bucket that bucket ... We're just a bunch of fish trying to swim out of our perspective buckets, and make our way to the sea.

Message Edited by MercyMe on 06-24-2007 02:41 PM

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

MidnightVoice — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:44:33 GMT

The higher your score, the less impact good things have on it, and the less likely it seems you will see many changes. Bad things are probably WORSE for a higher score than a lower one.

(With the exception of EX, that hates good things anyway - my score after 12 months of perfect behavior has gne down 7 points )

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

fused — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:13:31 GMT

MidnightVoice wrote:
The higher your score, the less impact good things have on it, and the less likely it seems you will see many changes. Bad things are probably WORSE for a higher score than a lower one.

(With the exception of EX, that hates good things anyway - my score after 12 months of perfect behavior has gne down 7 points )

With your scores, it looks as though you've grown in to a 1,200 lb. pacific blue marlin and cannot find a pool or bucket big enough to accommodate your shear mass!.

Message Edited by fused111 on 06-24-2007 12:13 PM

Re: Help Gurus...Please Explain This!

fused — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:27:43 GMT

JK of course!!!!!!!