TU down 8 EQ down 1, AZEO caused this?

[Anonymous]

Hi I am just starting out (I am a US citizen that moved back to the US some months ago.) I have a thin credit history with only one starter card (a secured visa) with a 5k CL on it. I have been biding my time until 6 months pass and the FICO score posts.

On another thread, I was offered the adivce to follow AZEO and I have done this and my credit utlization is now 4%. I was also offered the advice to open a secured loan and pay it way down so less thaan 10% was shown as owing on it. So I opened a secured loan for 5k and then paid it down to owing around USD$300.

I just checked my credit scores for this month and transunion vantage score dropped from 722 to 714, and Equifax vantage score dropped from 722 to 721. The only other US finanical thing I did was open a capital one savings account and I put 50k in there.

I looked on my credit karma report and clicked on the what's changed and it states: 

We found 2 changes to your Transunion credit report.

First Thing: Credit Card Utilization as of Aug 20, 2018 0%

Credit Card Utilization as of Sep 20, 2018 4%

You're doing a great job! Even though your balance went up a bit, you're still using less than 10% of your available credit, which makes your Credit Card Utilization rate Excellent.

Second thing:  New Accounts

STATE DEPARTMENT FEDERAL

Opening a new account can temporarily lower your score because it adds a hard inquiry to your report and lowers your average age of credit history. But with on-time payments and responsible use, your score may actually increase over time.

I checked and it lists "Hard inquiries" as 0 (ie none) in both TU and EQ. Equifax has not yet registered the secured loan I have taken out and paid down to less than 10%.

Am I doing AZEO wrong? Is there something else I should have done instead? I would have though my scores would have gone up and not down??

[dragontears]

First off, vantage scores are not used by the majority of lenders and are commonly referred to as FAKO scores. Changes in vantage scores don't equal changes in FICO score.
AZEO and having an installment loan with a low balance are tricks for FICO score boost, vantage scores seems to weigh the newly opened account penalty more than FICO scores do

[Cred4All]

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@dragontears wrote:

AZEO and having an installment loan with a low balance are tricks for FICO score boost, vantage scores seems to weigh the newly opened account penalty more than FICO scores do

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Agreed as well.  Op, without asking too much more regarding your profile, if it was a thinner profile to begin with prior to opening the new loan account (As mentioned above, in an attempt to fine tune your score) it could also have a temporary downside..   lowering the score due to the account age being new.  YMMV but being it's now a new account that could explain the temporary hit to the score, it will improve however.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous

I just checked my credit scores for this month and transunion vantage score dropped from 722 to 714, and Equifax vantage score dropped from 722 to 721. The only other US finanical thing I did was open a capital one savings account and I put 50k in there.

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Part of your issue here is that you're looking at irrelevant/meaningless scores.  Look at FICO scores only.  What CK gives you doesn't matter.

It sounds like you've opened multiple new accounts recently.  The inquiries related to these new accounts can drop your scores a little, but more important is that your age of accounts factors like AAoA and AoYA are going to be lower, resulting in a score drop many times.  Since your file is thin, this would likely be the reason for slight FICO score drops. 

Your scores will rebound quickly, usually in around 6 months.  Just sit tight and don't apply for anything else.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous

I just checked my credit scores for this month and transunion vantage score dropped from 722 to 714, and Equifax vantage score dropped from 722 to 721. The only other US finanical thing I did was open a capital one savings account and I put 50k in there.

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Part of your issue here is that you're looking at irrelevant/meaningless scores.  Look at FICO scores only.  What CK gives you doesn't matter.

It sounds like you've opened multiple new accounts recently.  The inquiries related to these new accounts can drop your scores a little, but more important is that your age of accounts factors like AAoA and AoYA are going to be lower, resulting in a score drop many times.  Since your file is thin, this would likely be the reason for slight FICO score drops. 

Your scores will rebound quickly, usually in around 6 months.  Just sit tight and don't apply for anything else.

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Ahh... The AAoA and AoYA argument makes some sense... There were no hard inquieres as far as I can tell from CreditKarma.

Thanks, j