20 point drop due to 0% Util

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2019

ARGHHHHHHH!!! I worked so hard to get my scores in the 700 range. *Tears* I feel so depress and sad. I started my credit journey last year with credit scores in the low 500's. I finally hit the 700 mark. I accidentally paid my one card that was reporting a balance due to going on vacation. Now I've lost 20 points on all three CB. I am so hurt and disheartened. Will I get it all back? my utilization was at 1%, do I need to get it back to excatly 1% to get all my points back?

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2019

Just put a small charge on the card, like $10. Once it posts, call them and ask for an off-cycle reporting. If they’ll do it, you’ll see the points recovered the next day.

Unless you are apping though, you really don’t have to sweat the scores. Finances before FICOs. But if you do what I mentioned, you’ll get your points right back - utilization has no memory.

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
Just put a small charge on the card, like $10. Once it posts, call them and ask for an off-cycle reporting. If they’ll do it, you’ll see the points recovered the next day.

Unless you are apping though, you really don’t have to sweat the scores. Finances before FICOs. But if you do what I mentioned, you’ll get your points right back - utilization has no memory.

Thank you so much for the advice. I am not apping. Reports are on ice and have been for the past year. I do request SP CLI's from Navy every six months and plan on requesting one soon so I need every bit of my points back.

randomguy1 · ‎09-26-2019

No history on utilization so don't sweat it unless you actually need the credit score. It's good to be debt free!

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2019

Then just wait for your scores to rebound and then ask for your CLI and you’re good

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2019

@randomguy1 wrote:
No history on utilization so don't sweat it unless you actually need the credit score. It's good to be debt free!

I know but its so hard to see it. I worked my tail off to get a decent score after struggling with poor credit for years. It was the only think I look forward to checking everyday. I just pray it rebounds fast and I get back all 20 pts.

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2019

Thanks for the encouragement. It just hurts so bad. I can understand a 5pt drop but a whole 20 pts. It took me months (maybe even longer), to get 20 pts.:smileysad

@Anonymous wrote:
Then just wait for your scores to rebound and then ask for your CLI and you’re good

DH1988 · ‎09-26-2019

This same thing happened to me once and I was upset too! It's so silly to be penalized for 0% UTI.

This month I accidently paid off my cards again, but I'm the AU on an account w/ 60 - 90% UTI so i'm hoping that will save me this time!

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks for the encouragement. It just hurts so bad. I can understand a 5pt drop but a whole 20 pts. It took me months (maybe even longer), to get 20 pts.:smileysad

Utilization is a single point in time metric. If you were at X utilization and a move to Y utilization caused a 20 point shift one way, moving from Y utilization back to X utilization would result in a 20 point shift the other way.

If it took you "months or longer" to get 20 points related to utilization, it took you that length of time to move from X to Y. You can move from Y back to X in a day or two and your score will return to where it was. The element of time doesn't matter, just the utilization percentage reported. Also keep in mind that any extended length of time like (say) 2-3 months where you're looking at a single factor impacting your Fico scores there are also many other things going on with your credit file. The longer the span of time, the more variables are introduced or CR pieces of data that change. That being said, it's impossible to nail down that just the utilization change(s) for during an extended length of time caused the score change realized over said period of time. Perhaps (fpr example) your score really went up 35 points due to the utilization change, but a different event caused a 15 point score drop during the same span of time. The result would be the net gain of 20 points that you see, making it seem like the utilization change didn't result in as much as it actually did. Hopefully that makes sense.

Anonymous · ‎09-26-2019

@DH1988 wrote:
It's so silly to be penalized for 0% UTI.

It's really not when you understand how the Fico algorithm works and that it only sees a single moment in time. I agree that if it were able to look at utilization over a span of time and see that you were "using your credit" recently it would be silly, but considering the current way the algorithm works it does in fact make sense. I do believe that future Fico versions (Fico 10, etc) will likely work to actually use Trended Data and look at more than a single moment in time snapshot. Looking at how the current algorithm works though, if you have 0% utilization it appears that you don't use your revolving credit at all and therefore there's no way to know if you can properly manage it.