Score Question

[irodriguez7885]

#1 Will a score raise monthly on its own if there is no activity in your credit file? If so to what degree estimate?

#2 If your credit report stays the same with no new baddies but you make on time monthly payments what would the degree increase estimate be?

The reason I am asking is because I am thinking about paying off my only debt in full which are three cap 1 cards that are all good standing. I don't want to get stuck where I pay them off and then my score just stays idle?

Any suggestions?

[RobertEG]

 Score will increase very slowly from month to month if nothing changes, and timely payments are met.

FICO does award you, per se, for timely payments.  It is indirect.  Most of all, the "reward" is for NOT be untimely.  That is, avoiding derogs.

Just paying timely normally results in very slow score increases, as FICO does not directly score timely payments.  Improvements result from the lower impact catagories such as age of account and in the aging of old, prior derogs.  Those take a lot of time.  Maybre a few points a month.

Significant score increases come from cleaning up old derogs and maintaining percent util of credit at low levels. 

As for paying off debt as a means to increase score, a lot depends on the current level of utilization.  Paying down a higher util card will show fairly significant point increases, but if the util is now farirly low, such as under 20%, the impact on FICO score may only be in the neighborhood of 10-20 pts max.

[MarineVietVet]

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@irodriguez7885 wrote:

#1 Will a score raise monthly on its own if there is no activity in your credit file? If so to what degree estimate?

#2 If your credit report stays the same with no new baddies but you make on time monthly payments what would the degree increase estimate be?

The reason I am asking is because I am thinking about paying off my only debt in full which are three cap 1 cards that are all good standing. I don't want to get stuck where I pay them off and then my score just stays idle?

Any suggestions?

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My opinion always has been and will continue to be that as long as you don't deplete an emergency fund then all debt should be paid off as fast as possible without consideration of anything else including your score.

Being debt free should be your #1 priority when making money decisions.

From a BK years ago to:
EX - 3/11 pulled by lender- 835, EQ - 2/11-816, TU - 2/11-782

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem".