topic Re: Significant score drop from crossing 50% threshold? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Significant score drop from crossing 50% threshold?

HiLine — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 17:17:42 GMT

New balances on two of my cards reported a couple of days ago, increasing the utilization on those cards from just under 50% to 68%, and from 34% to 52% respectively and overall utilization from 7% to 9%. The result was a 15 points drop in my ScoreWatch FICO score (can never remember which scoring model is used here). None of my other cards is reporting a balance.

I'm going to bet that the impact of 7% to 9% overall utilization is minimal, so it must be the individual balances crossing certain thresholds that caused the significant score drop. Since both cards crossed 50%, I think this is likely a threshold. Anyone else had a similar experience with a 50% threshold?

Re: Significant score drop from crossing 50% threshold?

lhcole77 — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 18:03:14 GMT

I have had the same experience in the past. And from my experience it seems that Experian is especially sensitive to crossing the threshold.

The credit monitoring service I subscribe to through Wells Fargo has a really good calculator built into it. It allows you to run what if scenarios. Every time I do this I noticed that when I crossed the 50% threshold scores dropped.

Re: Significant score drop from crossing 50% threshold?

HiLine — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 15:42:34 GMT

@lhcole77 wrote:
I have had the same experience in the past. And from my experience it seems that Experian is especially sensitive to crossing the threshold.

The credit monitoring service I subscribe to through Wells Fargo has a really good calculator built into it. It allows you to run what if scenarios. Every time I do this I noticed that when I crossed the 50% threshold scores dropped.

The Wells Fargo calculator is an interesting observation. Next month I shall bring the utilization on one of my cards down to below 50% and see what impact that will have on my score!

Re: Significant score drop from crossing 50% threshold?

lhcole77 — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 16:25:59 GMT

Good thinking. Do you subscribe to a service as well?

Re: Significant score drop from crossing 50% threshold?

DaBears — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 00:58:17 GMT

@HiLine wrote:
New balances on two of my cards reported a couple of days ago, increasing the utilization on those cards from just under 50% to 68%, and from 34% to 52% respectively and overall utilization from 7% to 9%. The result was a 15 points drop in my ScoreWatch FICO score (can never remember which scoring model is used here). None of my other cards is reporting a balance.

I'm going to bet that the impact of 7% to 9% overall utilization is minimal, so it must be the individual balances crossing certain thresholds that caused the significant score drop. Since both cards crossed 50%, I think this is likely a threshold. Anyone else had a similar experience with a 50% threshold?

Beacon 5.0 for Score Watch

Re: Significant score drop from crossing 50% threshold?

HiLine — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 04:43:44 GMT

@lhcole77 wrote:
Good thinking. Do you subscribe to a service as well?

I have Score Watch. The new balance decrease alert feature is going to help

DaBears: Beacon 5.0 it is. Thanks for the info!

Re: Significant score drop from crossing 50% threshold?

lhcole77 — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 06:11:34 GMT

Looking forward to test results