Balances on all revolving accounts. Has anyone ever gained points?

[marty56]

ilovepizza wrote:

Did the gas card make it 4 or 5 balances total. I thought you only had 2 CCs with balance out of 7 total accounts and got confused. It was 5 bal out of 9 accounts that dropped you score then right? Just wondering if your bucket works differently from mine. That's my new thing, learning about other buckets now.

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I normally have 3 accounts report.  My mortgage, my autoloan and one of the 3 credit cards I use.  I messed up and used the gas card at the wrong time so the $35 reported so I then had 4 accounts reporting with 2 out of 6 open credit cards for a total and adding an open LC that gives me a total of 7 revolving accounts.

I have been trying to let none of revolving accounts report but havent been able to corrdinate this yet.  The main reason is that GEMB is slow to report 0 balances and doesnt always report on the same date.  I acutally have 0 CC debt most of the time. 

LOL I am almost ready to give up playing the score game and just PIF 3 days before the bill is due so I would have 0 to 3 CCCs report a balance at any one time.  The truth is my major derog dominates my score way more then my CC balances or lack of.

In case anyone was wondering, my major derog shows up on all 3 reports and is around 3 years old.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

This is what I do not understand (haven't heard much about it)...why on earth are folks placed in certain "buckets"? If information on the file, solely, is what should determine score, why is it different for one person, than another???

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The purpose of score buckets (pools, etc) is to compare apples with apples, oranges with oranges. (fused, hush on the stupid mango thing!)

If there weren't buckets, we would all be going head-to-head against people with 20 years of immaculate on-time payments, and we'd all be choked together in the low 500's, if that, waiting for the others to screw up or die off.

With buckets, someone with a collection showing but who has otherwise done well with timely payments, demonstrating responsible behavior, scores better than someone with a collection, 2 120's, 4 90's, a charge-off, and so forth. Same for the other buckets. Someone like my 23-year-old DD#1 with 4 years of perfect history on 4 cards plus student loans can have her pretty 750's, showing that she is more responsible than her aged mother with one 90, several 30's, and a severely re-aged history after getting a bunch of new clean credit to dilute the old bad credit.

And don't forget that lenders look at reports as well as scores. They know that identical 680 scores can represent very different histories.

[Anonymous]

I haven't tested number of bal in my new bucket. Another excuse for a new test. I'll post results in 30 days.

[haulingthescoreup]

Yay, pizza, up and out of the trenches; take a bullet for the rest of us!

Meanwhile, for the opposite tactic, for the first time since my app-o-rama, I finally got every single revolving account, other than the BT, to report $0 balances. It's been like herding cats, lol. Net changes just this month:

EQ: +8
TU: +4
EX: +7 (EX is starting to love me again, thank goodness.)

This is for 15 open tradelines: a mortgage, a HELOC, a car loan, and a 0% BT CC (total of 4 TL's) are the only ones with balances..

And interestingly enough, when I play my favorite game of what-if on the sims, both EQ and TU project +20 immediate score improvement if I have 0% revolving util. As I'm now in the 19+ years longest age group, looks like I don't have to let anything report at all, hurray. (Yes, I know the sims aren't gospel, but I've found them to be reliable in this area.)

While those in shorter age groups do better to have at least one revolving account reporting, I think we've seen enough reports from long history credit people with all $0 balances to say that they do better with everything PIF'd. Which makes sense: this group is expected to be very conservative in credit use. I hate manipulating balances to let something show. Kill 'em all off before the statement date, I say.


edit to add: in fact, if I let a total of $499 report on EQ, I get the +20 projection. But if it's $500, it's +10. Interesting, that. Makes it look as though anything under a $500 balance is treated like $0.

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 08-14-2008 03:46 AM

[smallfry]

Not the first time I have seen that $500 mentioned.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@smallfry wrote:
Not the first time I have seen that $500 mentioned.

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It's a little harder to work on TU, because my balance on my HELOC always gets lumped in on the sim, even though it's not done so anywhere else. There the magic figure is $9400. Not $9401, but $9400. I think the balance displaying on the TU sim is around $25K, so that one's just completely off the wall.

Like I say, a displaying error on the TU sim that bugs the heck out of me.