Natural Disaster area - dropped score 30 points

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone! Just joined, seems like a fun forum. Currently in school for financ and accounting so this seems like my type of place!

Anyway, just got an email from Credit Karma (yeah, I know it's FAKO...Vanguard 3.0) and my score dropped 30 points from the "Natural Disaster Area". I've been doing research all afternoon and can't find a definitve answer. I'm in Wisconsin...we had a Federal natural disaster back in August but nothing other than that. It's on a Citi card account of my parent's that I'm an authorized user on. Is this something we should have removed? Or since it's Credit Karma should I not worry about that? Nothing else changed...thoughts? 

Could run a FICO score test I suppose, but I have all my credit frozen. 

[OmarR]

The "natural disaster area comment" is so that any late/missed payments are not "supposed" to adversely impact your score, since you may have endured an understandable hardship.

The 30 point drop is from something else.

[Anonymous]

Nothing else changed this past week when it dropped.

[CreditInspired]

Pull all 3 CB reports and search with a fine tooth comb. Something changed and it didn’t necessarily have to be in the last week.

Did UT increase?
Did you miss a payment?
Is there a collection that snuck in?
Did a school loan appear?
Did you apply for a CC?
Was an installment loan, auto loan paid off?

[RobertEG]

..... or did you have an old collection that simply updated, thus showing that it remained unpaid, and thus that the period since initial delinquency has increased?

[Pikaboo-icu]

Welcome to My Fico-  

We're happy you're here...

Get your real Ficos here:  https://www.creditchecktotal.com/homepage8

For $1 just cancel prior to the 7 days or you'll be auto charged.

That said: Have you had to use a portion of your credit recently? Carried higher balances than usual?

App'd & been approved for new credit of any kind? Paid off a loan?

Those things & more can all cause point drops, some more points than others..

Sorry about the disaster, I hope you weren't in the midst of it.

CHEERS

[RonM21]

Welcome to the forums elwoodblues27! All of the above replies put your in the right direction. Something changed on your reports and I would pull your Fico scores to see where they are at. This Natural Disaster Area thing would have no effect on your scores.

[Anonymous]

I did a little further digging...I'm an authorized user on one of my parents' cards and their balance went up by about a grand over the past few months...they have high utilization for some reason (90%). Probably will go down after the holidays. Might start another topic on that and the advantages/disadvanges of being an authorized user. I also got something about a new student loan (not sure, my parents pay that...I've never delt with it). No late/missed payments on anything ever. 

[CreditInspired]

Well at least you know.

Scores just don’t wildly plummet, or for that matter, increase for no reason. It’s always something. Where people get confused is when something else minute happens simultaneously in their report, they think the two are related.

Glad you listened to MyFICO members and did further research.

[Queen_Etherea]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I did a little further digging...I'm an authorized user on one of my parents' cards and their balance went up by about a grand over the past few months...they have high utilization for some reason (90%). Probably will go down after the holidays. Might start another topic on that and the advantages/disadvanges of being an authorized user. I also got something about a new student loan (not sure, my parents pay that...I've never delt with it). No late/missed payments on anything ever. 

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When I removed myself as an AU from my dad's PenFed card (99% utilized), my scores went up about 30 points. If you're certain they're going to be paying that balance down, and you're not going to be applying for anything soon, I'd say keep yourself on there. Especially if they've had the card for a long time and that history is reporting on your reports. I removed myself because my dad's card was about $15,500/$16,000. Although he's going to pay it off soon, it was keeping my overall UTI at 99% because my limits at the time were no where near $16,000.

It sounds like you're still young, so keeping that history is definitely helpful.