topic Re: Discover FICO Scores in General Credit Topics

Discover FICO Scores

rockup55 — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 22:45:59 GMT

My last 6 monthly FICO scores as reported by Discover are as follows: 785, 765, 784, 783, 783, 765. Every time the dip to 765 happen, I always get the following as the factor affecting my score

Re: Discover FICO Scores

Scupra — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 22:58:05 GMT

Did you possibly forget to the post "the following"?

Re: Discover FICO Scores

jamie123 — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 00:44:49 GMT

What happened to the following? It seems to have disappeared.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 00:52:31 GMT

Here are my suggestions,

Re: Discover FICO Scores

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 01:23:24 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Here are my suggestions,

That did make me laugh but let's not be too hard on the OP.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

rockup55 — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 15:58:32 GMT

Don't know what happen to the rest of my post but the message was Low Average Age which is 4 years. It's obviously still 4 years on the months where the dips does not occur so it seems that should affect the score the same every month and keep it to a 765 average. All of my other factors are excellent to outstanding and have remained essential the same for the past 8+ months -- no inquires, total accounts constants, utilization at 1%, zero miss payments

Re: Discover FICO Scores

jamie123 — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 21:53:08 GMT

@rockup55 wrote:
Don't know what happen to the rest of my post but the message was Low Average Age which is 4 years. It's obviously still 4 years on the months where the dips does not occur so it seems that should affect the score the same every month and keep it to a 765 average. All of my other factors are excellent to outstanding and have remained essential the same for the past 8+ months -- no inquires, total accounts constants, utilization at 1%, zero miss payments

It would help if we knew a few more things about your credit history to give you accurate advise like:

Number of credit cards?

Utilization?

How many cards are you allowing to report each month?

Any auto loans or student loans?

Mortgage?

IMHO your fluctuations in credit score must have something to do with the number of credit cards reporting a balance each month.

FICO has a calculation that dings you points for every credit card more than one that reports a balance. As the number of cards that reports a balance climbs the dings get larger. That's why it would be good for you to answer the questions that I asked above. We would be able to zero in a little closer on the reason for the score changes.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

rockup55 — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 00:03:57 GMT

I have 5 cards that I am the primary and 4 that I am a authorize user to my spouse. Utilization has never exceed 2% for almost two years on either an individual card or in total because I pay balances off several times during the month. I tend to leave a balance of $5 on three out of 4 of my primary cards and a bigger balance on the fourth one because it seem to me that some time agao I was getting ding for non use of cards because I was paying the balance down to zero on everything except one card. Based on your post, it sounds like you are saying I should only leave a balance on one card. The only thing that does not make sense is that for all months I have been leaving the small balance on 3 and the bigger balance on one so don't know why all months dont get treated the same. I do not have a mortgage, auto loan or student loan and have not had either for 5 plus years.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

jamie123 — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 00:45:25 GMT

@rockup55 wrote:
I have 5 cards that I am the primary and 4 that I am a authorize user to my spouse. Utilization has never exceed 2% for almost two years on either an individual card or in total because I pay balances off several times during the month. I tend to leave a balance of $5 on three out of 4 of my primary cards and a bigger balance on the fourth one because it seem to me that some time agao I was getting ding for non use of cards because I was paying the balance down to zero on everything except one card. Based on your post, it sounds like you are saying I should only leave a balance on one card. The only thing that does not make sense is that for all months I have been leaving the small balance on 3 and the bigger balance on one so don't know why all months dont get treated the same. I do not have a mortgage, auto loan or student loan and have not had either for 5 plus years.

You are letting too many cards report balances if you want your highest scores. Both your cards and your wife's cards count in the "reporting cards" calculation even though you are only an AU on her cards.

Yes, you will get dinged a few points if a card that you haven't let report for a while does finally report. You might try just letting 2 cards report every month and rotate the cards that you let report so the stay active in the eyes of FICO.

Don't forget, your wife's cards and the way her cards report affect your scores too. How does your wife let her cards report?

There is a pretty big ding involved if 50% or more of your cards report a balance. That could be where you are seeing those 15 point drops?

Re: Discover FICO Scores

rockup55 — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 01:22:34 GMT

In addition to my cards, half of my wife cards report a small balance. I appreciate your input. I will start reducing the total number of cards that report each month to one or two.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

Scupra — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 05:33:58 GMT

Good catch Jamie! That was the only thing I could think of as well with a monthly change like that

Re: Discover FICO Scores

rockup55 — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:05:39 GMT

| Credit ScorecardDiscover Card:

Sep '17	783 Very Good	See More
Aug '17	765 Very Good	See More
Jul '17	783 Very Good	See More
Jun '17	783 Very Good	See More
May '17	784 Very Good	See More
Apr '17	765 Very Good	See More
As you can see from the above, Sept results just posted without me making any changes

Re: Discover FICO Scores

rockup55 — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:10:37 GMT

March 17 results was also 784 so I guess I still dont really understand why I am getting the dip to 765 every few months and then it pops right back up to 783+. This is from consistently reporting a small balance on 80% of my cards including the authorize user cards of my spouse.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

Thomas_Thumb — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 01:26:31 GMT

rockup55 wrote:

March 17 results was also 784 so I guess I still dont really understand why I am getting the dip to 765 every few months and then it pops right back up to 783+. This is from consistently reporting a small balance on 80% of my cards including the authorize user cards of my spouse.

Hard to say. Perhaps the scores dip when more of your cards (fewer AU cards) report a balance.

I would advise reporting balances on less than 50% of your cards (exclude AU cards from the %) and also less than 50% of cards in total (include AU cards in calculation) as a general rule if you want higher scores. However, if you are content with your scores, no need to impose such constraints.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

jamie123 — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 03:01:04 GMT

@rockup55 wrote:
March 17 results was also 784 so I guess I still dont really understand why I am getting the dip to 765 every few months and then it pops right back up to 783+. This is from consistently reporting a small balance on 80% of my cards including the authorize user cards of my spouse.

Perhaps once every three months the reporting times line up where an additional card or two reports a balance that wasn't there before?

Okay...Listen up...

It has been proven time and time again on these forums that if you want to groom your scores to get them as high as they can get, you need to use the AZEO technique. The AZEO technique stands for ALL REPORT ZERO EXCEPT ONE. You want one card to report a small balance of less than 9% of its credit line (Could be as little as $3, just make sure it is less than 9%.) and all other cards to report $0. You need one card to report the small balance. If all cards report a balance of $0 you will actually lose points.

With your scores running consistently around 785 I bet you could break into the 800s by trying the AZEO technique. Yes, doing the AZEO technique with your scores could easily gain you at least 15 points. You should try it, you have nothing to lose and will probably be pleasantly surprised!

Re: Discover FICO Scores

rockup55 — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 15:28:24 GMT

Thanks, I will definitely try that approach. I don't have an issue with the 765 or 783 but I will try your suggestion. Nothing to lose really.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

rockup55 — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 15:36:54 GMT

Just for the record, there was a time when I use to only report one card with a small balance and all the rest with zero. I recall getting ding for inadequate use of credit because when you are balancing 10 cards in total, something is going to go through a long stretch of no reported use when you are only reporting a balance on one each cycle. That is the reason why I ended up changing to what I am doing presently. I will go back to the one card only small balance for awhile and see what happens.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 18:15:48 GMT

Here is my suggestion, it could be that Disco is misreporting something minute that escaped your eyes. I have only been with Disco for 4+ months, I noticed few days ago that my latest FICO 9/21/17 (TU) jumped 13 points from 789 to 802, upon further review I found that they misreported 1 less inquiry (1 instead of 2) than what is on my TU report, I'm guessing that they will catch the mistake on the next go around and my score will drop back down 789.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 21:43:01 GMT

I'm surprised that 1 inquiry instead of 2 would constitute a 13 point drop. Are they both scoreable, meaning are they both less than 1 year old? Many have reported 1-2 inquiries being "binned" together, meaning in terms of scoring there's no difference between having 1 or 2 scoreable inquiries on your report. Now, if 1 of your inquiries is less than a year old and the other more than a year old (unscoreable) and it's the 1 that's less than a year old that vanished, THAT could make your score go down for sure, as 1 inquiry is definitely "worse" in terms of scoring than 0.

Re: Discover FICO Scores

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 22:28:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm surprised that 1 inquiry instead of 2 would constitute a 13 point drop. Are they both scoreable, meaning are they both less than 1 year old? Many have reported 1-2 inquiries being "binned" together, meaning in terms of scoring there's no difference between having 1 or 2 scoreable inquiries on your report. Now, if 1 of your inquiries is less than a year old and the other more than a year old (unscoreable) and it's the 1 that's less than a year old that vanished, THAT could make your score go down for sure, as 1 inquiry is definitely "worse" in terms of scoring than 0.

The inquiries were 5 and 6 months old so both are "scorable".

That said, I'm not sure all 13 points are attributed to the inquiry because I actually started putting the AZEO technique discussed in thread to test a few months ago in stages. First I spent a few cycles stabilizing my score by reporting every account (7 accounts total) and overall at about 1%, the next cycle I reported 0% while still leaving some balance on every account, no changes to my EX (778 w/5 inquiries) and TU (789). Last cycle I attempted to report zero for all but one but failed miserably by mistiming a few autopays and ended up with 3 accounts with balance, no changes to EX but found TU at 802, unfortunately the misreporting of the inquiry threw off my data a little because I'm not sure if the bump came from the inquiry or from reporting 0 balance in 4 out of 7 accounts, or combination of both.

All of my accounts are about to close in the next few days, I have done a better job this time around and should only have one account reporting a balance, I should be able to provide some data point as to AZEO and its effects on FICO if at all.