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Newbie help understanding score steadily going down over past 2 years

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Newbie help understanding score steadily going down over past 2 years

In short I am a US expat living in Europe for the past 6 years. I still maintain an US address with family in Fl where I get my mail and am registered to vote etc. I always had great credit and remember my scores being oh the high side 775, 781,796 many years back. Now that my house is sold and mortgage is closed out in 2006 and with no car loan the only credit I do have on my CR are credit cards with a total limit of 102,000 (used to be 127,000$ but 3 or so cards were closed by creditors for non usage). I owe about 9200$ which is very low for overall available credit and no debt on the card is above 30% of total limit). I never had a late payment, any delinquent account or charge off from day one and have been building credit since 1995 YET MY SCORE HAS GONE DOWN TO 706. Today I have 5 credit card accounts, no new inquires, no lates, good utilization of debt across the cards under 9% overall and no more than 25% on one or two cards, have long term history yet I lost 70-80 points bumping me to B or B+ grade for interest rates. Why is this and why does my paid off mortgage a car loan and car lease do not count anymore?

Thanks in advance,

Steven 

Message 1 of 6
5 REPLIES 5
RobertEG
Legendary Contributor

Re: Newbie help understanding score steadily going down over past 2 years

When any of the CCs were closed by the creditor, did they also delete the account from your CR?  If so, you may have suffered loss of an oldest account or a reduction in your AAoA.

 

Another possibility is credit mix.  I have seen opposite opinions posted as to whether or not closed accounts are included in your mix of credit scoring.

Your experience may show that the installment accounts are no longer being included in your mix of credit scoring, leaving you only revolving credit.

Hopefully, others will chime in on that issue.......

 

Debt balance could also be a factor.  Again, there are differences in opinion as to whether FICO scores debt balance in addition to % util of CL.  While the debt may be low compared to your high CLs, it is farily substantial, and might possibly be having an effect.  Dunno......

 

A final area might be the number of cards reporting a balance.  The inactive cards were presumably reporting a $0 balance each month, improving your % revolving with balance.  Closing of those cards reduced the denominator in that calculation, most probably increasing your % cards with balance.

 

 

Message 2 of 6
MarineVietVet
Moderator Emeritus

Re: Newbie help understanding score steadily going down over past 2 years

I lost 70-80 points bumping me to B or B+ grade for interest rates

 

Hello and welcome.

 

May I ask where you got your score(s)? I ask because FICO doesn't use a letter system for grading scores. Unless I am misreading your words and if so I apologize.

Message 3 of 6
HoldingOntoHope
Valued Contributor

Re: Newbie help understanding score steadily going down over past 2 years

First we need to know where you got the original scores from and where are you getting the current score from. If the original scores are from a mortgage lender or directly from a bank then they are probably FICO scores and meaningful. If any of the scores are from a "Credit monitoring service / Free credit report service" then they are educational scores only and not your true FICO credit scores.

 

I ask because you say why doesn't my mortgage ... count. If it was only closed in 2006 it SHOULD still be on your credit report. Yet many of the FAKO services and advice only reflect currently open accounts. I don't have any idea if you can buy your FICO scores from this site while overseas, but if you still have US credit you will still have a FICO score. And those are the reports you need to look at which will tell you the true positives and negatives of what is in your credit files.

 

Edit: RobertEG and Marineviet outtyped me - and both have considerably more experience. Listen to them.

Best financial advice I ever got: "Just imagine what an adult would do and do that."

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Message 4 of 6
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Newbie help understanding score steadily going down over past 2 years

On my last real FICO report from 2009 when I last visited US and purchased it inactive cards were still on the report showing a total of 14 accounts (5 active CC. 5 closed CC, 1 mortgage, 1 2nd mortgage, 1 car loan, 1 car lease). I can not buy a real FICO or get a free yearly report from outside the US, something about IP not being USA so it blocks access for security purposes. The old scores were from lenders so I know they were right (car loan and mortgages). I still have the oldest CC active (1995) so the age of acc is there and quizzle is guestimating my score @ 706 which is good rather than excellent which it used to be. This is why I used B, B+ analogy. Am I then to assume that my actual score is still rather high? It just bugs me that besides the credit mix everything is perfect and instead of the score going up with age it is going down. I dont think 9000$ is that great of a debt as I know people that owe much more I myself was @ one point up to $40000 and I have paid it off. Will have to see about getting a real score from overseas just to be sure and have a baseline for the future.

thanks to everyone that has responded.

Message 5 of 6
MarineVietVet
Moderator Emeritus

Re: Newbie help understanding score steadily going down over past 2 years


@Anonymous wrote:

On my last real FICO report from 2009 when I last visited US and purchased it inactive cards were still on the report showing a total of 14 accounts (5 active CC. 5 closed CC, 1 mortgage, 1 2nd mortgage, 1 car loan, 1 car lease). I can not buy a real FICO or get a free yearly report from outside the US, something about IP not being USA so it blocks access for security purposes. The old scores were from lenders so I know they were right (car loan and mortgages). I still have the oldest CC active (1995) so the age of acc is there and quizzle is guestimating my score @ 706@ which is good rather than excellent which it used to be. This is why I used B, B+ analogy. Am I then to assume that my actual score is still rather high? It just bugs me that besides the credit mix everything is perfect and instead of the score going up with age it is going down. I dont think 9000$ is that great of a debt as I know people that owe much more I myself was @ one point up to $40000 and I have paid it off. Will have to see about getting a real score from overseas just to be sure and have a baseline for the future.

thanks to everyone that has responded.


Unfortunately this is useless. Quizzle doesn't offer FICO scores and there is simply no way to know what your true FICO's might be. The Quizzle "score" could be much higher or lower than your FICO. There is no way to tell.

 

Keep trying to find a way to pull a FICO score. You really need to know at least one of them to give you a baseline of where you are. But be aware that no one has been able to buy their own Experian FICO score since February of 2009. Creditors can pull Experian and also there is a CU (PSECU) in Pennsylvania that supplies that information to it's members only. You can only buy true FICO scores at a few places. One place is here at myFICO.

At one time you could also purchase your Transunion score at transunioncs.com but no more. Wal Mart now offers a TU08 score to those who have their store card and the Discover version.

Equifax will still sell you a FICO score found here: www.equifax.com/web-myfico-products/

Message 6 of 6
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