topic Re: Going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances has increased FICO score by 14 points in General Credit Topics

Going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances has increased FICO score by 14 points

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:51:14 GMT

This is the only change that has occured to spur on the change and I am amazed.
Just by having 4 accounts with balances my score went up that much. Wow.

The previous balance on one acount was $2.00. Now the Balance is $0.00, so there is no balance on this account. So now I have just 4 accounts with balances, and my score increased by 14. Amazing.

Has anyone else seena bump in score like this just going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances? Or maybe 4 to three accounts with balances?

Unbelievable!

Re: Going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances has increased FICO score by 14 points

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 18:53:41 GMT

I notice only when payments are made to bring down total bal. OR when I added CC to cut UTIL.

Re: Going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances has increased FICO score by 14 points

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:13:15 GMT

This has nothing to do with utilization.

It's just 5 accounts with balances going to 4 accounts with balances because I paid off a balance of $2.00 on one account.

In general, can anyone give me an idea of how many accounts you have carrying a balance on average--excluding mortgages, but including installment loans and CC's?

Re: Going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances has increased FICO score by 14 points

fused — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:31:57 GMT

rifleman wrote:
This has nothing to do with utilization.

It's just 5 accounts with balances going to 4 accounts with balances because I paid off a balance of $2.00 on one account.

In general, can anyone give me an idea of how many accounts you have carrying a balance on average--excluding mortgages, but including installment loans and CC's?

Reporting: I have 3-4% util on 6 CCs and two installments both unsecured with balances of $9,425 and $330. My scores have not suffered one bit even though I have 8 accounts with balances reporting.

Re: Going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances has increased FICO score by 14 points

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:53:25 GMT

It appears that myfico has a pretty good breakdown of the FICO score model--and it shows
that "number of accounts with Balances" falls directly into the "Ammounts owed" catagory, which is worth 30% of your score--so it makes perfect sense that scores would increase as the number of accounts with balances decreases--check this out I lifted it directly from Myfico:

Amounts Owed (worth 30% of score according to above Pie Chart)
* Amount owing on accounts
* Amount owing on specific types of accounts
* Lack of a specific type of balance, in some cases
* Number of accounts with balances
* Proportion of credit lines used (proportion of balances to total credit limits on certain types of revolving accounts)
* Proportion of installment loan amounts still owing (proportion of balance to original loan amount on certain types of installment loans)

I'm sure if everyone reduced their # of accounts w/ balances their scores would go up--even those high Fico achievers in the 760's and beyond could benefit from this.

Re: Going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances has increased FICO score by 14 points

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 23:17:32 GMT

rifleman wrote:
This is the only change that has occured to spur on the change and I am amazed.
Just by having 4 accounts with balances my score went up that much. Wow.

The previous balance on one acount was $2.00. Now the Balance is $0.00, so there is no balance on this account. So now I have just 4 accounts with balances, and my score increased by 14. Amazing.

Has anyone else seena bump in score like this just going from 5 to 4 accounts with balances? Or maybe 4 to three accounts with balances?

Unbelievable!

You must have gotten the 14 points I lost today when my Penfed hit...I wondered where they went....