A 53 point drop!!! Help me!

[HopeMission]

Actually the most recent drop was last week (10-3-18) for 20 points.  Last year at this time it was 33 points.  

I dont owe on a car or house so it was suggested on here that i get a small secured loan (Revolving Cridit mix).  Ive been doing this for several years.  Each year it gets paid off and I get another one.  These HUGE drops occurs at the moment they are paid off.  This drop is with Experian and TransUnion.

The points DONT come back.  Other than this my creidit remains steady.  Only goes up 2 or 3 pts a year.  

This 33+20=53 point drop will kill my chances of getting a future home.  

My question is---- is it worth it to call Ex and TU and explain that I am doing nothing wrong and they are killing me?

my only other question is=== has anybody been able to talk to a live person at Experian?  Each number I have ends up having to dial (1) for fraud or (2) for report.  No option for operator.  

Thank you

[NRB525]

Unfortunately EX cannot do anything about this.

What size SSL are you opening? No option to go 5 year term?

What are your FICO 8 scores?
The score drops should not be cumulative if you opened a new SSL and saw a new boost from that.

[Medic981]

Your FICO scores come from a proprietary formula which uses the information provided by each credit bureau. Contacting the credit bureau would be a waste because they have no control over the formula FICO uses to calculate your score. FICO has no control over the information that the credit bureaus are reporting. 

There must be something in your credit files that is causing these drops without a recovery. FICO gives the weights of various criteria that they look at 35% payment history, 30% amount owed, 15% length of history, 10% new credit, 10% types of credit used.

Hopefully, other MFers will have more insight than I have.

[Kree]

Possible causes for point lose in this scenario.

Going from 0 to 1 inquiry.

Lowering the Average Age of Accounts

Lowering the Age of Youngest Account

Raising total installment loan utilization.

[Anonymous]

What's your total credit card utilization percentage (overall) and the highest utilization reported on any single card?

[HopeMission]

Kudos for the tough to hear answers here.  I have learned that credit bureaus not only have no way to contact a live human—I have learned that there is no human element of  listening to a story and making a fair adjustment (Unless its fraud). Its all an A.I. alogoriymthm. (sp).

Advice:  Learn from my mistake.  If you don’t have the perfect mix of credit products (no revolving credit) don’t get a (SSL) secured loan.  It DOESN’T WORK.  You don’t want to risk loosing up to 33 points each time the term is up and your loan is paid.

[HeavenOhio]

@HopeMission, is there a gap between the time one loan closes and the time you replace it? If so, this is likely the ding you get from no open loans. We often hear FICO8 penalizes you for that by maybe around 30 points. 53 points is a little more than we usually hear about.

If this the case, don't worry about it. You know where the point loss came from. And you know that opening a new loan can eventually bring the points back. And in the meantime, your credit report looks good.

I think another loan is a good idea, but as stated above, it'd be better from several fronts to get something that's longer than a year. You also want a loan that allows you to push payment dates far into the future. That way, you can pay your loan down to 8.9% of its original amount without shortening the length of the loan. That's where FICO8 gives you its biggest score gain. There are people here who can explain this a lot better than I can. The most important thing is to check out products here before going ahead on your next loan.

Are you looking at a mortgage anytime in the future? If so, you probably want to add a couple of credit cards to your wallet. That'll give you "credit mix." If you're not looking into a mortgage and are happy without cards, it can wait. Just keep in mind that you'll want to have your cards in place in time for the oldest card to reach a year old before applying for the mortgage.

[HopeMission]

All my CC’s, credit scores and utilization should be below in my signature.  UTL has been <10% for 3 years now.  Over the years, each new CC I have added to my mix never caused any drop.

I can not figure a single reason how this annual loan keep hurting my scores every year and the points don’t come back!  I always opened a new loan well before the old loan was paid off.

Bottom line—looking for a home loan—my score is 50 points lower than it should.  This means not getting the home or paying tens of thousands more for it over 30 years.

[iv]

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@HopeMission wrote:

Kudos for the tough to hear answers here.  I have learned that credit bureaus not only have no way to contact a live human—I have learned that there is no human element of  listening to a story and making a fair adjustment (Unless its fraud). Its all an A.I. alogoriymthm. (sp).

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I certainly wouldn't call it AI...  but yes, the scoring algorithms are just "cold equations".

That's got upsides as well as downsides, though.  The only real reason most of the "tricks" you can apply to improve your scores work is that it's just a set of equations, rather than a human who could do a "I see what you did there.... But no."

You mentioned a mortgage application - are you actually looking at the specific scores used for mortgages? Or just at FICO 8 (or even VantageScores)?

The scores used for mortages (Equifax Score 5, Transunion Score 4, Experian Score 2) can be quite a bit different (higher or lower) than some other scoring models. Make sure that you are comparing the right numbers when preparing for a mortgage application.

[Anonymous]

Overall utililization shouldn't just be <10%, it should be < 8.9%.

Individual utilization also matters -- you can have <8.9% overall but if one card is maxed out, it can penalize you a lot.  So give us the details.

What website are you getting your FICO scores from?  MyFico itself?