49 Points from BOA reporting PIF

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

Love it. BOA took their sweet time to report, but I'll take it. Util is dropping like a rock, added new trade lines...EQ 757 EX 743 TU 707 lagging behind! 85K in available credit .

NRB525 · ‎10-03-2015

Congratulations on the score increase.

It is definitely a good feeling to see balances come down and scores rise.

High Bal Jan 2009 $116k on $146k limits 80% Util.
Oct 2014 $46k on $127k 36% util EQ 722 TU 727 EX 727
April 2018 $18k on $344k 5% util EQ 806 TU 810 EX 812
Jan 2019 $7.6k on $360k EQ 832 TU 839 EX 831
March 2021 $33k on $312k EQ 796 TU 798 EX 801
May 2021 Paid all Installments and Mortgages, one new Mortgage EQ 761 TY 774 EX 777
April 2022 EQ=811 TU=807 EX=805 - TU VS 3.0 765

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

Awesome!

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

Congrats!

One quick thought: your subject line says that you are receiving a big point increase from BOA reporting that you are paying in full. That's not strictly true. The current and past FICO models can't tell whether you have paid in full or not. All FICO considers is a snapshot of your latest balance.

Here's an example. Suppose Bob and Ted each have a BOA card with a 5k credit limit. Both have the same balance $800 at the end of the reporting period. But Bob has been paying his bill in full each month (he pays the "amount owed" in full a week after the statement prints) whereas Ted has been making only the minimum payment each month. As long as both have the same balance at the end of the reporting period, both guys will be getting the exact same scoring benefit from FICO's perspective. FICO won't give Bob any extra points for paying in full.

Down the road, I think it is very likely that FICO will begin incorporating whether a person pays in full or not (giving PIF-ers a benefit over people who do not PIF). That might happen in FICO 10, for example. But the widely used FICO 8 (as well as all earlier models) do not take into account whether or not you PIF.

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

Clearly the OP meant accont paid down to a $0 balance and zero utilization on that account vs. PIF.

Congrats OP. Utilization is so important and something we can control in real time.

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

@Anonymous wrote:
Clearly the OP meant accont paid down to a $0 balance and zero utilization on that account vs. PIF.

Congrats OP. Utilization is so important and something we can control in real time.

That's a guess on your part. He may have meant that he paid his card down to $0, rather than what he said (PIF-ing). But he may also be under the impression that, in addition to paying off a lot of the balance, paying your card in full (vs. carrying a balance) is something that earns you cred with FICO. That's not a crazy thing thing to think, many people do indeed think that, and probably in a few years FICO will indeed start doing that. They don't right now, however, and many newcomers read these discussions, so it is worth making sure people understand the difference between PIF-ing and paying to $0 -- the latter involves more work and typically involves making sure you do it before the statement reports.

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

I get the sillyness of FICO. I should clarify. Back in July, BOA freaked and balanced chased me as I made large payments on this trade line despite a long relationship of responsible usage and never a single late payment since the account opened in 1999. . Yes, the util was high on that card and other trade lines, as drop 2k and 1k payment, they flip and do a CLD to 3.5k putting me at at 105% util and ding the crap out of my scores. After 2 months, BOA finally reported the account PIF and zero balance.

So because the trade line reported zero util AND my over all util dropped I got a nice big score bump. I'm around 20% util on revolving trade lines and about to drop even more..heading for that 9% land.

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

Congrats on paying your account to zero and lowering your overall util %. It feels good. And your new accounts also had to help getting your util% down too.

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

So glad to hear you are being successful at paying down your credit card debt. Good for you.

Your story is a helpful and cautionary one. High utilizations can cause credit card companies to panic and lower your credit limit, which causes your score to drop hugely (when you suddenly are over 100%). The lowered score can cause other issuers to get worrried -- much like a stock market crash.

Thus the hard won wisdom (which you can now attest to) of keeping your utilizations away substantially away from being maxxed out. Congrats again and best wishes.

Anonymous · ‎10-03-2015

It's a touchy beast that causes a cascading effect. My goal is utimately pay off all revolving credit (I'm not far from that) but in the mean time keep trade lines high to maximize what balance I am carrying and for future use to always keep util low no matter what I'm doing with the cards. It seems to be working. I was over 770 FICO back in May of 2014 and I plan to be back up there and higher. Time to start gardening for a while and then hit up the big CU's for even bigger trade lines, PLC and then pay off my 2nd personal loan.