Fico Simulator Question...REVOLVING BALANCES!!!!!!!!!!!

[terrymurph]

Why Is it that when you input how much you want to pay down on your revolving accounts you get two different projections. Which guess would be more accurate if anyone has done this before which simulation came out to be more accurate.

Simulate how your FICO® score might change if you pay down:

$ every month for 1 months.  said my simulated score would be 683-723
  OR
$ pay              of your total Revolving/Open Account balance.

** The balance may not include amounts currently in dispute or bad debt/collection balances. 663-683

[terrymurph]

Anyone

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't rely on what the simulator says too much.

Paying down your utilization will help your score.  If it is the only contributing factor to a lower score, say you are at 90% and you pay it down to 10%, you should see a good raise in your score.

If your CR has a lot of negative accounts on it, the raise may not be that great.

[AndySoCal]

Is your revolving debt amount listed as one the reasons hurting your score?

[terrymurph]

Yes it is........... I am currently at 63% utilization.

[Anonymous]

Paying it down to 10% or less should help.

What are the other negatvie factors or is that it?

[terrymurph]

I have a charge-off that is reporting.  It has been reporting since 2005, the only thing is i owe 1400.00 on it and it is being calculated in my util. I am in the process of paying it off, last month i made my first payment on the CO and also paid off a closed credit card. My score acutually went up 31 points after these actions. From 632 to 663(equifax).

[Anonymous]

Paying off the CO will be a definite plus for your score.  Getting that paid off and paying down your CCs should give a good raise in score.

[Freshstart2020]

I know this is an older post however, when you paid the charge off.  DId you pay the OC or the CA?  Did you send in varies amounts each month until you paid it down to the 10% or did you set up payment arrangements with them?

[haulingthescoreup]

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@terrymurph wrote:

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@AndySoCal wrote:

Is your revolving debt amount listed as one the reasons hurting your score?

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Yes it is........... I am currently at 63% utilization.

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Just sort of a general observation: the sim is interesting, and lots of fun to play with, but it can make you crazy.

For those who are trying to decide their best course of action, I'd say look first on screen two of your myFICO score reports, where they list the negatives and positives. Let the positives go --they're pretty much there for warm fuzzies, and nothing else. But the negatives are the factors that are holding down your FICO scores, listed in order of importance, with the most influential listed first. (If your scores are up in the 720's and above, it won't list four negative factors. Instead, you might want to pull your scores from myfico.com/12, which will list the top four negatives, no matter how high your score. Don't panic --it won't list positive factors, and other things will be missing as well. Then you'll have to clear your cache in order to access regular myFICO reports again.)

Some things just take time to fix, like "short history" or "too many inquiries." But if you have high utilization of revolving credit listed first or second, that means getting control of what reports to the credit bureaus. If you carry balances, do your best to hammer them down. If you don't carry balances, learn to pay your bills off before the statements drop, so that they report $0 or a small amount. It's not costing you any money; you're just paying a bit earlier. And unless you have some seriously humongous credit card bills, you're not losing any significant interest by paying a week or whatever early --maybe a couple of pennies, if that.

If the sim gives you a best action of something like "pay down balances over 24 months", it's not really saying to drag out your repayment over two years, although it certainly seems that way. It really means that your best action is to pay your balances down to $0 ASAP, and then keep things that way, with no new delinquencies, for the next two years. It's the combination of low util + two years of clean history that will (= may) result in the projected scores.