Vantage Score Explosion

Citylights18 · ‎07-10-2020

This week my VS average has increased from 749 to 807, an average of 57 points!

How did I do it? My overall utilization dropped from 4% to 2% which merits some more points but its amazing how much a high utilization on one particular card can hold you back.

For me that card was Discover. By making an extra one time payment I reduced the utilization from 61.6% to 19.8%. When I initially picked up the card over a year ago I used for a BT to help move some credit card money around and since I haven't been paying interest on the balance I've let it ride interest free while I made the minimum monthly payments.

What I think this shows that taking a Discover or a Chase Freedom or a US Bank Cash+ out for the 0% balance transfer offer works well when you are still trying to get your CC debt under control but to load one of those cards up to 80 or 90% doesn't work as well towards the end when you're focused on pushing up your scores as high as possible, IMO.

AllZero · ‎07-10-2020

Congratulations on your score increase. I don't fully understand VantageScore. Besides aggregate utilization, I'm guessing they have individual scoring thresholds like FICO; 29%, 49%, 69%, 89%, etc.

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Iusedtolurk · ‎07-10-2020

@Citylights18 wrote:
This week my VS average has increased from 749 to 807, an average of 57 points!

How did I do it? My overall utilization dropped from 4% to 2% which merits some more points but its amazing how much a high utilization on one particular card can hold you back.

For me that card was Discover. By making an extra one time payment I reduced the utilization from 61.6% to 19.8%. When I initially picked up the card over a year ago I used for a BT to help move some credit card money around and since I haven't been paying interest on the balance I've let it ride interest free while I made the minimum monthly payments.

What I think this shows that taking a Discover or a Chase Freedom or a US Bank Cash+ out for the 0% balance transfer offer works well when you are still trying to get your CC debt under control but to load one of those cards up to 80 or 90% doesn't work as well towards the end when you're focused on pushing up your scores as high as possible, IMO.

Vantage does seem to have breakpoints also so taking the utilization (reduced the utilization from 61.6% to 19.8%) would cross a couple of thresholds so the explosive point increase isn't surprising with Vantage known wild swings.

The real interesting question would be how were the Fico scores affected.

Citylights18 · ‎07-11-2020

@Iusedtolurk wrote:
@Citylights18 wrote:
This week my VS average has increased from 749 to 807, an average of 57 points!

How did I do it? My overall utilization dropped from 4% to 2% which merits some more points but its amazing how much a high utilization on one particular card can hold you back.

For me that card was Discover. By making an extra one time payment I reduced the utilization from 61.6% to 19.8%. When I initially picked up the card over a year ago I used for a BT to help move some credit card money around and since I haven't been paying interest on the balance I've let it ride interest free while I made the minimum monthly payments.

What I think this shows that taking a Discover or a Chase Freedom or a US Bank Cash+ out for the 0% balance transfer offer works well when you are still trying to get your CC debt under control but to load one of those cards up to 80 or 90% doesn't work as well towards the end when you're focused on pushing up your scores as high as possible, IMO.
Vantage does seem to have breakpoints also so taking the utilization (reduced the utilization from 61.6% to 19.8%) would cross a couple of thresholds so the explosive point increase isn't surprising with Vantage known wild swings.

The real interesting question would be how were the Fico scores affected.

My experian Fico 8 moved from 759 to 767. Transunion Fico 8 from 740 to 742. Equifax Fico 8 from 741 to 756.

That takes me to what 755 average in the Fico 8.

REDBOYYY56 · ‎07-12-2020

When I saw your Vantage explosion it made me chuckled. I couldn't help but to chime in . My vantage score last week went from 656 to 720 for no reason other than paying down 500 on my Wells Fargo.
My 3 fico scores increase an Average of 10 points because of crossing a threshold. 🤔

FlaDude · ‎07-13-2020

@Citylights18 wrote:
This week my VS average has increased from 749 to 807, an average of 57 points!

How did I do it? My overall utilization dropped from 4% to 2% which merits some more points but its amazing how much a high utilization on one particular card can hold you back.

For me that card was Discover. By making an extra one time payment I reduced the utilization from 61.6% to 19.8%. When I initially picked up the card over a year ago I used for a BT to help move some credit card money around and since I haven't been paying interest on the balance I've let it ride interest free while I made the minimum monthly payments.

What I think this shows that taking a Discover or a Chase Freedom or a US Bank Cash+ out for the 0% balance transfer offer works well when you are still trying to get your CC debt under control but to load one of those cards up to 80 or 90% doesn't work as well towards the end when you're focused on pushing up your scores as high as possible, IMO.

Obviously this is a trade off between score and money. During my process of dealing with 80k of credit card debt, I certainly favored saving money over immediately maximizing scores. This included serial balance transfers for a several years and focusing on paying the balances that still had interest vs. the ones at 0% so I did have fairly maxed out BT cards at times. The good news is that this seemed to impact Vantage scores much more than FICO. At one point my VS3 scores were about 80 points lower than FICO 8. Now that the remainder of my debt is in loans and I don't carry CC balances, the two sets of scores are pretty close.

Scores: March 21 FICO 8: EX 810, TU 808, EQ 813
AoOA: closed: 40 years, open: 30 years; AAoA: 14 years
Amex Gold, Amex Blue, Amex ED, Amex Delta Blue, Amex Hilton Surpass, BoA Platinum Plus, Chase Freedom Unlimited, Chase Amazon, Chase CSP, Chase United Explorer, Citi AA, Sync Lowes, total CL 203k

Citylights18 · ‎07-26-2020

@FlaDude wrote:
@Citylights18 wrote:
This week my VS average has increased from 749 to 807, an average of 57 points!

How did I do it? My overall utilization dropped from 4% to 2% which merits some more points but its amazing how much a high utilization on one particular card can hold you back.

For me that card was Discover. By making an extra one time payment I reduced the utilization from 61.6% to 19.8%. When I initially picked up the card over a year ago I used for a BT to help move some credit card money around and since I haven't been paying interest on the balance I've let it ride interest free while I made the minimum monthly payments.

What I think this shows that taking a Discover or a Chase Freedom or a US Bank Cash+ out for the 0% balance transfer offer works well when you are still trying to get your CC debt under control but to load one of those cards up to 80 or 90% doesn't work as well towards the end when you're focused on pushing up your scores as high as possible, IMO.
Obviously this is a trade off between score and money. During my process of dealing with 80k of credit card debt, I certainly favored saving money over immediately maximizing scores. This included serial balance transfers for a several years and focusing on paying the balances that still had interest vs. the ones at 0% so I did have fairly maxed out BT cards at times. The good news is that this seemed to impact Vantage scores much more than FICO. At one point my VS3 scores were about 80 points lower than FICO 8. Now that the remainder of my debt is in loans and I don't carry CC balances, the two sets of scores are pretty close.

That was the approach I was taking back when my minimums were over 2,000 a month. I felt it was wiser to make extra payments to some and put bills on cards where I was already on the hook for minimum payments. Those cards were however in the the 10-12% range and not the ultra high interest rates of the commercial bank issuers.

Once I had the intrest under control for the account I started using paid in full cards for expenses to reduce the accrual of interest.