@Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the prompt response, Tom, but I still don't see how this happens. There is NOTHING but bill payment going on in my history. I don't have one late payment anywhere, because I will go without food before I make a late payment -- that's how much I want to have my scores back where they were. So though you presented a very cogent answer, I still am no further ahead in understanding why these scores fluctuate the way they do. I haven't applied for new credit either.
One thing I don't know how to get rid of and hope you can help there also, is I recently went looking at several SUVs to lease. The three different dealerships told me the credit inquiries would be soft. As it turns out they were hard inquiries that resulted in lowering my score. The same dealer is down three times for an inquiry? Two models I looked at didn't have sufficient cargo room for my five rescued dogs (three of whom are Rotties, so room is required!). The one I settled on and signed paperwork with is the only one I expected to see a hard inquiry from.
I'll wait until the next cycle and see if anything changes. Thank you again and if you have an answer to the paragraph above, I would appreciate it.
If you tell us how many credit cards there are, what the limits are, and what the balances are, plus what installment loans there are, and what the starting amounts and present balances are, we can probably figure out (a) what caused the score changes, and (b) how to make the algorithms work for you. It's definitely not as simple as penalizing you for paying things down, but there are peculiarities in the algorithms which you can get working for you instead of against you, if you know what they are.
As to your question about inquiries, (a) why would you believe what a car dealer tells you about soft vs. hard inquiries? (b) even though a flurry of 3 hard inquiries is visible from your car loan, if they occurred within a 2 week time frame they will be scored as only 1.
@Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the prompt response, Tom, but I still don't see how this happens. There is NOTHING but bill payment going on in my history. I don't have one late payment anywhere, because I will go without food before I make a late payment -- that's how much I want to have my scores back where they were. So though you presented a very cogent answer, I still am no further ahead in understanding why these scores fluctuate the way they do. I haven't applied for new credit either.
One thing I don't know how to get rid of and hope you can help there also, is I recently went looking at several SUVs to lease. The three different dealerships told me the credit inquiries would be soft. As it turns out they were hard inquiries that resulted in lowering my score. The same dealer is down three times for an inquiry? Two models I looked at didn't have sufficient cargo room for my five rescued dogs (three of whom are Rotties, so room is required!). The one I settled on and signed paperwork with is the only one I expected to see a hard inquiry from.
I'll wait until the next cycle and see if anything changes. Thank you again and if you have an answer to the paragraph above, I would appreciate it.
Worrying about small changes (+/- 10 or even 20 points) is the route to insanity in my opinion. The algorithm can be awkward especially from the rational consumer perspective.
Optimizing one's FICO score isn't that hard if you never miss a payment (seriously, most people would've going through a BK), your major problem is that the BK while it's on there is going to keep your scores depressed until it falls off much like my tax lien.
There are some idiosyncracies along the way, as Thomas mentioned paying down a loan is a good thing, but paying it off completely dependant on the rest of your file might be a negative. It's counter-intuitive to be sure and there are lots of complaints here regarding that so you're in good company, but it can also be easily manipulated too for a trivial amount of money (less than a yuppie foodstamp) if that's what hit you.
~700 scores for a BK don't suck, in general for optimal you want minimal but non-zero reported balances on only a couple of cards (1 is optimal for everyone) and $0 on the rest of the revolving accounts... and then some open installment loan, ideally at less than call it 9% of it's original balance.
That's as pretty as it gets, with an almost 5 year old tax lien at the time and the above strategy I hit 739 on a FICO 8 score, and we've only had one person break that subsequently (who hit a 753 with way more credit history than I and also older tax liens which might have been a difference). BK's are counted similarly to tax liens, maybe identically but we don't have the same amount of data around them unfortunately, not sure what it is about tax liens that correlates with people who do analysis of the algorithm but anyway.
I agree. I think a minor fluctuation, good or bad, should almost be ignored because it really doesn't signal much.
OP, if you happen to decide to provide more details about your reports as S.J. recommended, I sure someone can figure out what else could have triggered the score movement.
OP, if you happen to decide to provide more details about your reports as S.J. recommended, I sure someone can figure out what else could have triggered the score movement.
@Anonymous wrote:Thank you all. I really wasn't expecting much on July 4th. Glad to see others are online as well. My problem today is I'm running a cageless dog boarding business out of my home and I have nine dogs here right now (five are mine). Please let me get past the holiday and then I can provide the information re: CCs and loans. I read online that the credit bureaus were going to change the way they do things and allow negatives to drop off much sooner. Did anyone hear anything about that. Considering the crash and all the damage it caused, I would think they could be a little more considerate of those of us whose businesses and lives were ruined by the pigs in the financial sector and in DC.
All those hundred-hour weeks negated due to no fault of ours. Nice! I'll be back in touch when I have the info you need. You're the best. I already feel less stressed! :-)
It's been floated in the legislative branch at least twice now, didn't go anywhere the first time not sure it will the second time either though this one looks a little more rational... there are unintended consequences to it potentially, like the lenders all changing their underwriting requirements similar to what they do whenever they switch FICO score versions.
For the most part most lenders already take that into account and treat a tax lien or BK or lates or whatever from those times way differently than if someone were to get one say right now even if that isn't hugely reflected in some of the older scores, more recent ones like FICO 8 do take that somewhat into account though a public record like a BK or tax lien is going to hurt for the entire time it's on there... fortunately that's not really an impediment these days to acquiring credit, knock on wood but other than a CLI I haven't been turned down for anything since joining this forum and my file isn't pretty.