Score calculator

[Anonymous]

just wondering, do anyone know of a score calcutor that is good or can someone tell me how many point your score goes up a month if you pay down on a credit card. i'm 15 points from a mortage and i had a credit card that had a balance of $168 out of $300 and i paid it down to $16, just seeing if that will boost me the 15 points i need. thanks for anyone's help in this

[Anonymous]

That depends a huge amount on what other credit cards you have and what their balances and limits are.  If you list your cards like this....

Card 1.    Balance = ____    Limit = ____

Card 2.    Balance = ____    Limit = ____

Card 3.    Balance = ____    Limit = ____

etc.

... then we'll be in a much better position to advise you.

[Anonymous]

Card 1.    Balance = __16__    Limit = _200___

Card 2.    Balance = __49__    Limit = _400___

Card 3.    Balance = __24__    Limit = __500__

i only have a capital one card, fingerhut, and zales

[Anonymous]

Pay two cards to $0, pay one card down to $5 before statement cut.

Having balances on 50% or more of your cards hurts your FICO score.  Having only ONE card report a balance of $5 is the best way to maximize FICO quickly.  Having all your cards report $0 will ding you points.

[Anonymous]

It looks like the OP was at 21% aggregate utilization prior to his paydown.  After this new balance reports following the payment, he'll be at 9% utilization so his scores from the aggregate change should go up nicely.  Not sure about the 15 points, but it could be close to that.  Taking down two cards to $0 balances though and letting just 1 of the 3 report a small balance IMO would grab him another 5-10 points, so overall I don't think he'll have any problem getting the 15 points he's looking for.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

just wondering, do anyone know of a score calcutor that is good or can someone tell me how many point your score goes up a month if you pay down on a credit card. i'm 15 points from a mortage and i had a credit card that had a balance of $168 out of $300 and i paid it down to $16, just seeing if that will boost me the 15 points i need. thanks for anyone's help in this

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Hi Pandora.  In your original post you mentioned that the card you paid down had a credit limit of $300.  (Above.)

But in your followup post, none of your cards has a credit limit of $300.  (See below.)

Card 1.    Balance = __16__    Limit = _200___

Card 2.    Balance = __49__    Limit = _400___

Card 3.    Balance = __24__    Limit = __500__

Does Card #1 actually have a limit $300 or was it $200?

Either way the best action is still the advice you got from ABCD.  But it's hard to predict your scores when we don't have a certain idea of what your limits and balances were and are now.

[Anonymous]

I bet 15 points is totally doable.  If not more.

He was in the 50%+ individual utilization area.  Bringing both aggregate and individual down to $5 and bringing number of cards with balance down to 1 should boost them decently I would guess.

Also every month of no inquiries or new accounts may help a little bit just by natural age effects.

[Anonymous]

i'm sorry about that, i was at work doing this and someone was telling me 300 for some reason and i missed and typed that. my captial 1 card is $200 and not $300

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

i'm sorry about that, i was at work doing this and someone was telling me 300 for some reason and i missed and typed that. my captial 1 card is $200 and not $300

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That turns out to be very good news for you.  It means that, when your card was recently at $168, it had an individual utilization of

        168 / 200 = 84%

When it was at 84% you may have been getting a much stiffer penalty than if you had a credit limit of $300

        168 / 300 = 54%

So the fact that you will be switching to the strategy recommended by ABCD (all cards at $0 except one with a small balance) -- may give you a bigger boost than we thought (because you were starting from a worse place).

In the future, never let any card cross over to more than 49% -- aside from scoring penalties CC issuers can get worried and start imposing their own kinds of "adverse action" on you.  That's not a risk for some people who have stable profiles with several accounts and generally high scores, but unless that is true about a person he should keep each card under 49% at all times, just to be safe.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure if it's cool to post bobwang's FICO simulator charts so mods please delete if it's against the rules.

If you look at the bottom tier (500s) you can see the effect of utilization on scores.  In almost ALL cases, bringing utilization down to $0 on all cards BUT ONE should have a boost of anywhere from 10-20 points unless you're already at under 10% utilization.  If you're over 60% utilization you might see a boost of as much as 35 points bringing it down to $0 on all but one (at $10 let's say).

If you are in the middle tier of scores (600s-700s) or the top tier (800s) the utilization effect is even more severe -- as much as 80 FICO points from going from 50% utilization down to 0%+1 card.