Total Available Credit - Capital One Transunion VantageScore® 3.0

[Goal810]

I checked my credit score online through a Capital One CC I have, and it gives some feedback on the factors that affect the score. One of the areas I scored "good" instead of "excellent" was total amount of available credit, which is $35K, and it said that an excellent would be > $50K. I did request a credit increase a couple weeks ago through Capital One on the $5K card but have not heard back yet, but not sure how much they would increase it by, if it was increased.

Have 5 CCs - 2 from Capital One (5000, 2000), a BoA (7500), a Discover (4800), and an Elan Financial (18K). No new accounts recently.

For purposes of increasing my credit score (this one is ~ 800 out of 850), should I try to increase total available credit, and if so how, considering that opening a new CC would affect the number of recent accounts? Also is there any other way to increase the total available credit besides credit cards? Eg if I opened a HELOC, would it contribute, or would it be considered as taking out debt?

[Jnbmom]

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@Goal810 wrote:

I checked my credit score online through a Capital One CC I have, and it gives some feedback on the factors that affect the score. One of the areas I scored "good" instead of "excellent" was total amount of available credit, which is $35K, and it said that an excellent would be > $50K. I did request a credit increase a couple weeks ago through Capital One on the $5K card but have not heard back yet, but not sure how much they would increase it by, if it was increased.

Have 5 CCs - 2 from Capital One (5000, 2000), a BoA (7500), a Discover (4800), and an Elan Financial (18K). No new accounts recently.

For purposes of increasing my credit score (this one is ~ 800 out of 850), should I try to increase total available credit, and if so how, considering that opening a new CC would affect the number of recent accounts? Also is there any other way to increase the total available credit besides credit cards? Eg if I opened a HELOC, would it contribute, or would it be considered as taking out debt?

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No do not believe what Credit Karma suggests, they should be solely used for monitoring purposes only, do not go out and get more cads because CK says too.

They also suggest I open "more accounts" I have 40+..................................

[babygirl1256]

@Jnbmom I totally agree about Credit Karma . . . still trying to convince my DH of the exact same thing about CK!

[Slabenstein]

I think the OP is talking about Capital One's Credit Wise monitoring service and the TU VS3 score that comes with it, not Credit Karma. 

As to whether increasing credit limits would raise a VS3 score, I really don't know, since I don't know much about that score model's metrics, so the suggestion could either be accurate or it could just be ignorable fluff from Capital One.  But since VantageScore is not widely used for lending decisions, and FICO scores do not appear to score revolving limits directly, I would not worry about trying to increase TCL for scores.  The only real exception to that would be if you are going be doing some long-term carrying of balances large enough to put you over utilization thresholds, since, for FICOs, TCL is only scored as the denominator in aggregate utilization.  But even then the potential score gains from lower agg util would have to be weighed against potential score losses from changes to age of youngest revolver, AAoA and related metrics, and inquiries if you're doing anyting other than requesting SP CLIs.  If carrying large balances relative to your TCL isn't an issue for you then the dollar amount of your TCL shouldn't directly matter for FICO since util is a ratio.

OP, if you don't have access to your FICO scores through any of your current cards or accounts, you can see your EX8 for free at creditscorecard.com from Discover.  You can see all three of your FICO8's, all three of your credit reports, your EX2 mortgage score, and a few other Experian scores with a $1 trial at www.creditchecktotal.com, which is an Experian site.  Just be sure to downgrade to a free membership before the trial period is over so you're not hit with a full monthly charge for the service.

[Jnbmom]

Well whether it's through CK, Cap one CW or Wallet hub, they all promote the same gibberish ( including Experian), telling people to "open" more accounts. Again all these mentioned FREE services will try to entice you to apply for more cards preferably through their sites. 

I would not go by ANY of their recommendations

[Ficoproblems247]

I agree 100% with what the others explained very well and in great detail. Just to throw a DP out there for the sake of it, although it has already been discussed that those scores are meaningless, I watched mine when I crossed the 50k threshold and there were no changes whatsoever. Again, all of those sites get kickbacks when you apply through their links, so they base their interfaces on making you feel like applying for more credit will make everything better. It's ridiculous. 

[Goal810]

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@Slabenstein wrote:

OP, if you don't have access to your FICO scores through any of your current cards or accounts, you can see your EX8 for free at creditscorecard.com from Discover.  You can see all three of your FICO8's, all three of your credit reports, your EX2 mortgage score, and a few other Experian scores with a $1 trial at www.creditchecktotal.com, which is an Experian site.  Just be sure to downgrade to a free membership before the trial period is over so you're not hit with a full monthly charge for the service.

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Thanks, very useful. Since I am most concerned about interest rates for lending and you say this score is not important, I will ignore it. The other scores I have access to are "Fico score 8" through Transunion and "Fico score" through Equifax. Are these sufficient to pay attention to/more important than the Transunion VantageScore® 3.0? 

I don't have any ongoing online free scores through Experian but I requested a credit report from them by mail (since the online site would not authenticate me) and it came with a free Fico 8 credit score; it should still be available weekly by request due to the pandemic.

[Creditin]

You can see 28 fico scores at Credit.com free for a month.

However, I don't think they update until you start paying the 25 bucks.

I had the service for 5$ a month and let it go. I don't need that many scores.

BTW, I applied to Citi and was denied with a 788 CS. It happens that the new

credit score for CCs is 300-900. Go figure.

Cheers.

[Slabenstein]

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@Goal810 wrote:

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@Slabenstein wrote:

OP, if you don't have access to your FICO scores through any of your current cards or accounts, you can see your EX8 for free at creditscorecard.com from Discover.  You can see all three of your FICO8's, all three of your credit reports, your EX2 mortgage score, and a few other Experian scores with a $1 trial at www.creditchecktotal.com, which is an Experian site.  Just be sure to downgrade to a free membership before the trial period is over so you're not hit with a full monthly charge for the service.

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Thanks, very useful. Since I am most concerned about interest rates for lending and you say this score is not important, I will ignore it. The other scores I have access to are "Fico score 8" through Transunion and "Fico score" through Equifax. Are these sufficient to pay attention to/more important than the Transunion VantageScore® 3.0? 

I don't have any ongoing online free scores through Experian but I requested a credit report from them by mail (since the online site would not authenticate me) and it came with a free Fico 8 credit score; it should still be available weekly by request due to the pandemic.

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For your rates for consumer lending products, TU FICO8 is way more important to monitor than TU VS3, for sure.  A lender that pulls TU may use a different FICO score version for any particular app, whether an older or newer score, e.g. TU4 or TU9, or an industry option like TU BC8 or TU AU8, but those score versions are all at least related to each other and where you are on F8 can at least give you a rough idea of where you might be on the others for that bureau.  VS3 is a completely different score model from FICO, created independently by a different organization, so a VS3 score doesn't really imply anything about what your FICO scores might be.  Differences of 100+ points between them are not unknown.

What are your sources for your TU FICO8 and EQ FICO scores, btb?  That will help us confirm for you that what you are looking at really are FICOs.

Also, I didn't know that EX gave a free EX8 when you ordered your report by mail.  That's kind of cool.