topic Re: Debt Free After Twelve Long Years -- Effect On FICO Score? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Debt Free After Twelve Long Years -- Effect On FICO Score?

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:34:18 GMT

After twelve long years I finally paid off my last cc. How will this effect my fico score? Will the credit agencies see this as 0% utilization and thus decrease my score? Should I care or just celebrate being out of debt slavery?

Re: Debt Free After Twelve Long Years -- Effect On FICO Score?

marty56 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:47:37 GMT

I loose points on EQ and EX for 0% util but gain on TU. LOL its always easy to use a CC and let it report a balance. The real prize is to be debt free and I would trade a 850 FICO score for debt free any day of the year.

Re: Debt Free After Twelve Long Years -- Effect On FICO Score?

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:01:06 GMT

The funny thing is I rarely thought about looking at my credit report or fico score during the last 12 years but the very day I paid off my last balance I signed up for creditkarma and scorewatch...I was shocked to see that it was pretty good 773 EQ and 789 on CK.

The times I did think about looking at my credit report/score I was too scared to know since I feared the worst. The last 3 to 4 years have been hellish/barebones as I finally decided to pay off all my debt....it feels good to be out from under the thumb of boa and citibank.

Re: Debt Free After Twelve Long Years -- Effect On FICO Score?

marty56 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:19:23 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
The times I did think about looking at my credit report/score I was too scared to know since I feared the worst.

Not so long ago I was the owner of 70k of CC debt. I was afraid when they pulled my credit report for things like an autoloan and even when I tried to get a LOC from my CU and was turned down for having too much debt. That was during the time I was in a DMP no less.

These days times have changed. I have been able to get the credit I wanted at the best rates and I dont care what my interest rates are or CLon my 3 credit cards.

I am still under the thumb of BofA though since I have a major derog with them which should fall off my CR in about 3 years. At that point I will get a copy of my FICO scores and tape them to the local BofA bank's door, assuming of course they still are in business, with a brief excerpt taken from a certian Kid Rock song.

No more Mr Nice and in Debt guy with CCCs.

Re: Debt Free After Twelve Long Years -- Effect On FICO Score?

AndySoCal — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:34:21 GMT

Congratultions on getting all the debt paid off ! Do you still have any open lines of credit ? IE a credit card with a zero balance

Re: Debt Free After Twelve Long Years -- Effect On FICO Score?

FocusOnFICO — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:40:39 GMT

MM----congratulations!

To keep your score high--and raise it somewhat--you may indeed want to have one of your cards report a small (1%) balance. There are many threads here to explain the details.

But as others have said, the main thing is that you are debt-free. Well done.

Re: Debt Free After Twelve Long Years -- Effect On FICO Score?

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:07:56 GMT

I've only had two cc in my life and both of them are still open. Before I paid off my debt I had stopped using them for the last three to four years so that I could pay them down. Now I use them for everyday items but pay them off by the end of the month.

Since neither of my cards have yet to report a zero balance to the cca I plan on paying off my "pending" transactions in the next few days to see what will happen to my fico score when they do report the zero balance.

Anyone else in debt hell out there....just keep plugging away till you climb out of the hole. Good luck!

Message Edited by multimillionaire on 07-15-2009 03:07 AM