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NoNonsense Simulation

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lg8302ch
Senior Contributor

Re: NoNonsense Simulation


@Themanwhocan wrote:

@NoNonsense wrote:

@Blackrv7 wrote:

Somewhat correct but not entirely.  On my EX report for example, an analysis can see the recent high balance and recent payment on my other cards, even those which report a 0 balance.  As for the score, for me, one card reporting less than 9% total utl optimizes my score. If I let another card report even 1%, my score goes down 5 points.  If I let another one report another 1%, I take another 5 point hit.  If I let all cards report 0, I take a 7 point hit.


 

I know about their ability to see any account's highest balance ever, I believe, right?

 

As for seeing last payment of cards that don't post a balance... What payment do they see?  Because, as you know, many people in this boards, including me, sometimes pays several times a month,  Do they see the accumulation of all those payments, do they see whatever payment happens to be the last one?  That could be very deceiving information, if that is the case.  What if you spend $500 with a card in a month, pay $450 before the Statement Cut, the PIF the other $50.  What last payment do the analysts of other credit cards see?  The last payment of the $50 or that and all the previous ones in the month?


I think it depends on the credit card company. heres an example from American Express. I paid in full every month, sometimes before, sometimes after statement cut:

 

                  Spend

Month  1: $576.27

Month  2: $183.99

Month  3: $1152.86

Month  4: $188.95

 

My Transunion report shows:

 

Balance      Amount paid

$576            $0

$0                 $0

$1152          $0

$0                 $0

 

My Barclays card reports differently. If I pay after statement date, the payment shows up in the next month, if I make payments before the statement cuts, it gets added to current month. So often last months plus part of this months is added together, then the next month it appears that i paid less than the full amount because part of the payment was already credited in the prevous month, etc.


Is this from TU directly or 3rd party service ?

Message 21 of 51
NoNonsense
Established Member

Re: NoNonsense Simulation

 

bada_bing, 

 

I think is is best that we entertain ourselves in the nuances of the FICO score rather than to see the big picture, because if one were to get into what's really the value behind anything financial from a FICO score to a simple dollar, we would never leave the house.  Too scary.  It's better to pretend the real issue is how to get past 750 FICO, because the house of cards is better left unseen...

Message 22 of 51
Themanwhocan
Senior Contributor

Re: NoNonsense Simulation


@lg8302ch wrote:

@Themanwhocan wrote:

@NoNonsense wrote:

@Blackrv7 wrote:

Somewhat correct but not entirely.  On my EX report for example, an analysis can see the recent high balance and recent payment on my other cards, even those which report a 0 balance.  As for the score, for me, one card reporting less than 9% total utl optimizes my score. If I let another card report even 1%, my score goes down 5 points.  If I let another one report another 1%, I take another 5 point hit.  If I let all cards report 0, I take a 7 point hit.


 

I know about their ability to see any account's highest balance ever, I believe, right?

 

As for seeing last payment of cards that don't post a balance... What payment do they see?  Because, as you know, many people in this boards, including me, sometimes pays several times a month,  Do they see the accumulation of all those payments, do they see whatever payment happens to be the last one?  That could be very deceiving information, if that is the case.  What if you spend $500 with a card in a month, pay $450 before the Statement Cut, the PIF the other $50.  What last payment do the analysts of other credit cards see?  The last payment of the $50 or that and all the previous ones in the month?


I think it depends on the credit card company. heres an example from American Express. I paid in full every month, sometimes before, sometimes after statement cut:

 

                  Spend

Month  1: $576.27

Month  2: $183.99

Month  3: $1152.86

Month  4: $188.95

 

My Transunion report shows:

 

Balance      Amount paid

$576            $0

$0                 $0

$1152          $0

$0                 $0

 

My Barclays card reports differently. If I pay after statement date, the payment shows up in the next month, if I make payments before the statement cuts, it gets added to current month. So often last months plus part of this months is added together, then the next month it appears that i paid less than the full amount because part of the payment was already credited in the prevous month, etc.


Is this from TU directly or 3rd party service ?


From Transunion, online version that I kept a printed copy of. Those are the first 4 months usage from my BCE card.





TU-8: 804 EX-8: 805 EQ-8: 788 EX-98: 767 EQ-04: 752    
TU-9 Bankcard: 837 EQ-9: 823 EX-9 Bankcard: 837
Total $443,800
Message 23 of 51
NoNonsense
Established Member

Re: NoNonsense Simulation

 

Thanks to the several of you that have been posting your findings in your own credit reports regarding to what would be visible to a their party analyst.  Well, apparently, the answer is ALMOST everything, if not EVERYTHING.

 

So, if that is the case, all this paying before Statement Cut, monitoring utilization, etc is just to deceive a computer?  The one that generates the FICO score?  Because, obviously the analyst apparently can see through all that.

 

And the computer is "deceived" only because the programmers, for whatever reason, have decided not to modify the algorithm, otherwise the FICO computers would also see everything.  So, What is the point of this apparent pointless game?

Message 24 of 51
lg8302ch
Senior Contributor

Re: NoNonsense Simulation

Thanks. Never really paid attention but also on Equifax not all of the payments are reported. Last time I checked Experian it looked pretty accurate for all accounts. At least what I realized at that time.

Message 25 of 51
user5387
Valued Contributor

Re: NoNonsense Simulation


@NoNonsense wrote:

 

Thanks to the several of you that have been posting your findings in your own credit reports regarding to what would be visible to a their party analyst.  Well, apparently, the answer is ALMOST everything, if not EVERYTHING.

 

So, if that is the case, all this paying before Statement Cut, monitoring utilization, etc is just to deceive a computer?  The one that generates the FICO score?  Because, obviously the analyst apparently can see through all that.

 

And the computer is "deceived" only because the programmers, for whatever reason, have decided not to modify the algorithm, otherwise the FICO computers would also see everything.  So, What is the point of this apparent pointless game?


If everyone pays their balance before the statement date, then utilization would lose its efficacy in predicting future delinquency.

 

But people don't do this, and many of them are carrying a balance, and for those folks, the issue is moot.

 

For those who pay after the statement date, and before the due date, there may be behavioral differences that are useful in predicting the future.

 

The same may be true for someone who lets small balances report on all their cards.  The total balance may not be much, but there may be a behavioral component that is useful in predicting the future.

 

Message 26 of 51
NoNonsense
Established Member

Re: NoNonsense Simulation


@user5387 wrote:

@NoNonsense wrote:

 

Thanks to the several of you that have been posting your findings in your own credit reports regarding to what would be visible to a their party analyst.  Well, apparently, the answer is ALMOST everything, if not EVERYTHING.

 

So, if that is the case, all this paying before Statement Cut, monitoring utilization, etc is just to deceive a computer?  The one that generates the FICO score?  Because, obviously the analyst apparently can see through all that.

 

And the computer is "deceived" only because the programmers, for whatever reason, have decided not to modify the algorithm, otherwise the FICO computers would also see everything.  So, What is the point of this apparent pointless game?


If everyone pays their balance before the statement date, then utilization would lose its efficacy in predicting future delinquency.

 

But people don't do this, and many of them are carrying a balance, and for those folks, the issue is moot.

 

For those who pay after the statement date, and before the due date, there may be behavioral differences that are useful in predicting the future.

 

The same may be true for someone who lets small balances report on all their cards.  The total balance may not be much, but there may be a behavioral component that is useful in predicting the future.

 


 

Has anybody told you, you  have the rare ability to make others feel like lab rats?  Smiley Happy

Message 27 of 51
cashnocredit
Valued Contributor

Re: NoNonsense Simulation

My experience echos that of the OP and others on the thread:

 

I experienced an extreme rebucketting event when my oldest line reached 4 exactly years. With no other changes my FICO dropped 60ish points. Once in the new bucket I found that the number of cards with balances was a critical factor and, being curious, experimented a bit. There was a huge sensitivity to how many of my cards were reporting zero balances. Over the last year this sensitivity has gradually reduced and is still important, but not as much as it was upon the initial bucket (scorecard) change. This thread has a history of these effects:

 

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Extreme-Rebucketing-Effects-757-to-690-on...

 

 

Also, the new reporting of payments made has only been in effect 3 or so years and not all creditors report this though increasingly more do. Most creditors report cumulative payments made but at least one, in my case, only reports the last payment made.

 

This new information is extremely valuable in assessing risk as a FICO banking blog (fico.com) pointed out some months ago.  People that make 200% or more above the minimum payment are at much lower default risk than those that pay the minimums or close to the minimums. This data is not in FICO scores.  Yet.  It has been incorporated in the more recent VantageScore 3.0 and likely is the basis for their claim to better assess short histories.  FICO, while not using this in their scores (they were designed before this data was reported) does sell custom scores to creditors that incorporates this info so anyone dealing with a major lender's CC can pretty much assume this data is being used for decisioning.

 

As to why the big change in 0 balances occurs my guess is that people new to credit are way more likely to use all their cards whereas people that have an older CC history and haven't settled into a few cards for most of their useage are at somehwat higher risk. Really though, it's not that big an effect as we are in the low risk part of the population and subtled difference can have big score changes even though the risk profiles really aren't that different.


I have reestablished credit over the last couple years
so my moniker is, well, rather out of date.

WM Discover $1800, WF Plat 12k, Chase Freedom Siggy18k, Amex Plat (60k H/B), Citi AA EWMC 25k
Message 28 of 51
user5387
Valued Contributor

Re: NoNonsense Simulation


@NoNonsense wrote:

@user5387 wrote:

@NoNonsense wrote:

 

Thanks to the several of you that have been posting your findings in your own credit reports regarding to what would be visible to a their party analyst.  Well, apparently, the answer is ALMOST everything, if not EVERYTHING.

 

So, if that is the case, all this paying before Statement Cut, monitoring utilization, etc is just to deceive a computer?  The one that generates the FICO score?  Because, obviously the analyst apparently can see through all that.

 

And the computer is "deceived" only because the programmers, for whatever reason, have decided not to modify the algorithm, otherwise the FICO computers would also see everything.  So, What is the point of this apparent pointless game?


If everyone pays their balance before the statement date, then utilization would lose its efficacy in predicting future delinquency.

 

But people don't do this, and many of them are carrying a balance, and for those folks, the issue is moot.

 

For those who pay after the statement date, and before the due date, there may be behavioral differences that are useful in predicting the future.

 

The same may be true for someone who lets small balances report on all their cards.  The total balance may not be much, but there may be a behavioral component that is useful in predicting the future.

 


 

Has anybody told you, you  have the rare ability to make others feel like lab rats?  Smiley Happy


I'm not the one who came up with any of this, but I do know that it's based on heavy crunching to analyze human behavior.

 

I think there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that we don't really appreciate.

 

For example, I have good credit but almost never get any preapprovals or auto CLIs, and I expect the reason why is that my behavior as reflected on my reports indicates that I'm a poor candidate for carrying balances and paying interest.

 

Message 29 of 51
Vegas247
Established Contributor

Re: NoNonsense Simulation

Well what is the consensus here? I have 4 cards myself....I'm taking this as: let one card show a small utilization like 3 to 5% utilization, and the other 3 cards or however you may have, show a zero balance, for highest possible FICO SCORES....is that correct? Anyone?

 

Has anyone done a test where all the cards show a zero balance?

 

$600 Barclaycard® Rewards MasterCard® - Average Credit $6500 Blue Cash Everyday® Card from American Express $30k credit card16k Chase Freedom® - $200 Bonus12k VSiggy
Message 30 of 51
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