A little frustrated

Anonymous · ‎07-20-2021

Hello MyFICO family I'm a little frustrated and need some guidance.

ibstarted the year owing $26k in debt on credit cards. My wife and I applied for a mortgage in March and my middle score is 689.(EQ) That isn't bad but I wanted to get it to 700. I paid down my debt to $12k as of my last report (pulled last night) with 6/23 cards reporting a balance and I've grown my total CLs to $241k and since March I'm still at.....689. What do I need to do to get those 11 points?

I have 13 inquiries on that report 2 of which fall off in September when they check my credit again for closing. My current uti is 5% across all reports. If I get all the 6 cards to a uti of 9% or less each will that help? Idk it just seems like all the work I've been doing isn't paying off at all with my mortgage scores. My fico 8 scores however are all over 700 now.

any help in this matter is greatly appreciated, thank you.

Anonymous · ‎07-23-2021

@Anonymous wrote:
Hello MyFICO family I'm a little frustrated and need some guidance.
ibstarted the year owing $26k in debt on credit cards. My wife and I applied for a mortgage in March and my middle score is 689.(EQ) That isn't bad but I wanted to get it to 700. I paid down my debt to $12k as of my last report (pulled last night) with 6/23 cards reporting a balance and I've grown my total CLs to $241k and since March I'm still at.....689. What do I need to do to get those 11 points?
I have 13 inquiries on that report 2 of which fall off in September when they check my credit again for closing. My current uti is 5% across all reports. If I get all the 6 cards to a uti of 9% or less each will that help? Idk it just seems like all the work I've been doing isn't paying off at all with my mortgage scores. My fico 8 scores however are all over 700 now.
any help in this matter is greatly appreciated, thank you.

Not knowing more info it is hard to see what is going wrong. But if I may guess?

You still owe out around $12,000. If you owe it to a CC that has a limit of any less then $36,000 it is why your scores are not going up. You must maintain a utilization of no more then 30% on any card. The total utilization is fine but one card with a utilization of more then 30% and your scores will remain unchanged. If you moved the balance via balance transfers to three cards with no more then $4,000 per card and that card has a CL of $12K you will then see an immediate jump in your credit scores. If you want to post more info I am sure we can get to the bottom of it but it seems like a utilization issue.

Thanks

Mark

SEAlifer · ‎07-23-2021

You just have to pay down the cards. Experian has a free trial and they have a "FICO Score Simulator" tool that allows you to see how different events would affect your credit. So you can say "If I paid down $4,000 in CC debt, what would that do to my score?" or "What if I make my minimum monthly payments on time for 6 months?" I sign up for the free trial all of the time and it gives you daily updates of your Experian score for 30 days before you get charged. And then you just cancel it before it hits your card and you can do it all again shortly thereafter.

But, yeah, credit scores are a very unique calculation for each individual so it'd be difficult for anyone to tell you exactly what to do.

AU

arealswellgirl · ‎07-23-2021

Completely agree with the responses you've gotten. I did want to add that since it seems you're already approved, is there a rush to get your score up? The check before closing is a soft pull, so as long as your balances haven't significantly increased, there's no reason to aggressively improve your score before closing because they use the score you're approved with throughout the whole process. I don't even think they care about your score before closing.

Regardless, you're doing an amazing job though, scores can take a while to recover after paying them down significantly. Have you owned real estate before? If not, that may be why your mortgage scores are a little lower too without real estate payment history. If that isn't it, my bet's on the util, but ultimately those scores aren't important unless you're continuing to shop around for a lender after your approval.