Just turned 18 approved

[CYBERSAM]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Thank you all for the wonderful welcome. This is the best site for a young person to grow up on -financially & posting mistakes and downturns help us all grow and become better at handling our own credit. So, please keep it coming!! Love to you all - stay safe and please remember I am only 18 so be patient and have plenty of kindness if I do not get  point of your post  right away. I really am studying the credit world very hard. 

Cheers,

---

Cheers 🍻

Oh wait! 🥛🥛

[Anonymous]

cybersamp, ha ha! I did get a sip of champagne for the turning of 18.
 But, most of my dialect is from time spent abroad as a student and traveling over seas. 
You made me laugh and I 😊 thank you! 

[sarge12]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I just wanted to share that there have been some serious hits on my FICO scores! I mean the two original application  took a total of 17 points!! Now, I personally think it's some kind of adjustment because, I have taken another 27 point hit - excessive to put it mildly. Just applied for the two cards in one day = 17 points - so not at all sure what's with the xtra points being taken off.  Any opinions appreciated & thanks again for the warm welcome. Cheers

---

Everything you do will have greatly magnified results on your scores due to the thin file. A credit inquiry for instance has very little point drop for my credit file with over 20 accounts and high AAoA, credit limits, etc. It is however somewhat necessary to your credit future to open accounts that will age. Even with 19 cards I limit my inqueries to 2 or 3 at most per year. An inquiry has a very small effect on my score now. 3 inquiries on a credit file that has only 3 months of history have a much higher impact than one with 15 years of perfect payment history. All data is relative to the amount of data in your file. With a very well aged thick credit file an inquiry might only change a score 2 or 3 points, where a thin file changes 17. On the flip side, with 800 point scores, just 1 late payment might result in a 100 point drop, because with 15 years of perfect payments and very high limits, a late payment would be shocking to the issuer, and perhaps even cause panic. Perfect payments for that long creates the expectation of always being perfect. As your files grow and mature, the effects of inquiries will be much lower than it is now. As you cross thresholds like 1 year, 3 years etc. you will also see some huge increases in a month, perhaps even 100 points. It will be due to crossing a threshold, and even re-bucketing, which is a term used for moving to a higher range scorecard. Once you reach very high scores, the changes in a score become much more static, and may even go over a year with the exact same score. At that point a 5 point increase is thrilling. There have been times I would swear my scores are stuck...just a straight line on the score graph. My scores have been between 780 and 836 for about 10 years.

[Anonymous]

Sarge12, Thank You so much for your insight. I really do get the concept but, It's hard not to feel judged even though I know that its irrational because, I am dealing with algorithms. I know, I will level out and I feel really fortunate that  I was able to start out at 18 yrs old with two solid cards. It is just that it stings when My Fico emails yet another drop and the cards haven't even been printed yet - I don't want to whine, but, ouch! Thanks again for your great post -really  super advice and lots of insight-

 best to you sarge12! 

[sarge12]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Sarge12, Thank You so much for your insight. I really do get the concept but, It's hard not to feel judged even though I know that its irrational because, I am dealing with algorithms. I know, I will level out and I feel really fortunate that  I was able to start out at 18 yrs old with two solid cards. It is just that it stings when My Fico emails yet another drop and the cards haven't even been printed yet - I don't want to whine, but, ouch! Thanks again for your great post -really  super advice and lots of insight-

 best to you sarge12! 

---

I am curious, It normally takes 6 months of credit history for fico to even return a score. Is the score you are pulling a fico score, or a Vantage 3.0 score from creditkarma or credit sesame? If that is not a real fico score, it is fairly meaningless because the Vantage 3.0 scores are pulled by very few lenders. Fico and Vantage scores can differ a lot. I only ask because at 18, many people have to pull vantage due to the credit history being less than 6 months.

[Anonymous]

sarge12
My scores are the real MY FICO.

I filled out the info and payed the $32.35 and downloaded the My Fico app. There were instantly three very nice scores sitting there mostly 750, 771, 750ish.
I immediately applied for the two college cards Disco & cap 1 respectively and that's when things started going upside down in regards to my scores. I will not app for anymore cards and I would like to add that I am on many cards as a AU. I think they are just making the adjustments. This AM my fico scores across the three 700,730, 710 - huge adjustment in a week. I am trying to remain calm😱

* I don't believe from what I have learned, that credit karma and their ilk are worth while and seem to be very misleading. 

[sarge12]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

sarge12
My scores are the real MY FICO.

I filled out the info and payed the $32.35 and downloaded the My Fico app. There were instantly three very nice scores sitting there mostly 750, 771, 750ish.
I immediately applied for the two college cards Disco & cap 1 respectively and that's when things started going upside down in regards to my scores. I will not app for anymore cards and I would like to add that I am on many cards as a AU. I think they are just making the adjustments. This AM my fico scores across the three 700,730, 710 - huge adjustment in a week. I am trying to remain calm😱

* I don't believe from what I have learned, that credit karma and their ilk are worth while and seem to be very misleading. 

---

700, 730, and 710 would be average if you were 28, but at 18 it is quite unusually above average. It takes time to get high scores even if you do everything perfect. Obviously, the people who's cards you are an AU on has very good payment history on those cards. At the super young age of 18, and having just recently gotten 2 new cards, you should be thrilled with those scores. I am not even sure I have ever seen an 18 year old that ever had the 3 750+ scores you had before the recent new accounts and inquiries.

[MyFault]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

sarge12
My scores are the real MY FICO.

I filled out the info and payed the $32.35 and downloaded the My Fico app. There were instantly three very nice scores sitting there mostly 750, 771, 750ish.
I immediately applied for the two college cards Disco & cap 1 respectively and that's when things started going upside down in regards to my scores. I will not app for anymore cards and I would like to add that I am on many cards as a AU. I think they are just making the adjustments. This AM my fico scores across the three 700,730, 710 - huge adjustment in a week. I am trying to remain calm😱

* I don't believe from what I have learned, that credit karma and their ilk are worth while and seem to be very misleading. 

---

---

Credit Karma isn't misleading, however they're not educating people about the scores they're providing people. That's my main issue with CK. It's a great resource for Ex and TU to check your reports, but if they would explain to their users that their V3.0 scores aren't used by credit issuers, people wouldn't be so focused on the scoring part. I keep my CK as a free way to make sure my report is clean, but i also use Experian for my Fico scores. Thankfully they offer the free 7 day trial all the time so i've never had to pay for my Fico8 scores everytime.

@sarge12 wrote:

700, 730, and 710 would be average if you were 28, but at 18 it is quite unusually above average. It takes time to get high scores even if you do everything perfect. Obviously, the people who's cards you are an AU on has very good payment history on those cards. At the super young age of 18, and having just recently gotten 2 new cards, you should be thrilled with those scores. I am not even sure I have ever seen an 18 year old that ever had the 3 750+ scores you had before the recent new accounts and inquiries.

---

I would agree, but with the changes in scoring models over the years it's not "normal", but not absolutely unheard of.

I remember when i was 19 and purchased my first motorcycle, my scores were in the 680's, and that was with three years of AU history already. But that was almost 20 years ago and scoring models have changed.

[sarge12]

@Anonymous By the way, if the 2 cards you just got are the only 2 you have, you should get a 3rd card at least after you have had those 2 for a year. For reasons of utilization and to be able to do AZEO, you really need 3 cards in your name. The wisdom of that is you want under 50% of cards reporting a balance, but more than 0. You also want that 1 card to report less than 29% individual utilization, and under 9% aggregate utilization. It is fairly well established that 3 cards, and 1 installment loan are needed to maximize utilization and credit mix. In fico 8 utilization is a point in time metric, so the AZEO is really only necessary when you have a HP. I hear that the new models fico 10, and 10T, will have some trended data from the previous 24 months, and once adopted, it might be best to just have low utilization all the time. I have had for about 10 years at least. Since we have no idea when lenders might start using the new models that may look at your utilization over the previous 24 months, it may be a good idea to start keeping the utilization low all the time starting now. That will also start those 3 aging together to dilute future cards from hitting your AAoA to badly. If you have 3 cards that are 5 years old each, adding a fourth card would be 15/4 to determine the AAoA. If you only had 2 cards 5 years old, adding a third would be 10/3 to determine the new AAoA. For that reason the more aged cards you have, the less the new card will lower the AAoA. If you only have 1 card 5 years old, getting a second would be 5/2, cutting that AAoA in half, and causing a greater drop in your score due to the AAoA. If you can handle cards the right way, the more cards you have, the easier it is to keep utilization and AAoA from dropping your score a lot when getting new cards. That will make your scores a lot more stable and prevent new credit cards from making more than a few point drops.

[mrcraft]

Congratulations!!  Awesome post.