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Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?

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Adidas
New Contributor

Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?

Hello! I was updating my credit spreadsheet (I hadn't looked closely in over a year) and I noticed a 30 point jump that I'm trying to explain. I tried to calculate as many of the useful values as I could from the primer post and color coded the values based on some of my best guesses.

 

Hopefully the table speaks for itself but just in case:

- I have 6 total accounts, 5 CC + 1 installment (SSL) below 9%

- I've never had a missed payment

- No HPs on any bureau since 5/2018

- My oldest account is a CC and my newest is the SSL installment loan

- "Max Indv Util" calculates the max utilization on any card rather than listing them all. So this is the single card max util.

- "% Bal >$0" is basically for AZEO calculation. So for me 20% means 1/5 CC had a balance. There is also less than 9% on the SSL but I didn't count that here so maybe 2/6 technically. I've setup auto bill pays on most of my CC so I don't have to worry about them becoming inactive/closed. Everything is on autopilot that way but it means I'm never AZEO.

- Most columns are in months except the "mix" category where "1" simply means I do have an installment loan in addition to revolving accounts.

- Basically the entire time I think I've been in the "clean, old, thick, no new accounts" scorecard.

 

image.png

 

My questions:

1) What do you think explains the ~30 pt jump last August for FICO 08? Was it the average and oldest installment loan reaching 2.5 years (they're the same loan)? Hopefully some of this data can help with understanding scoring better.

 

2) How long do you think it will take to reach 850 for FICO 08? What will be the determining factor? AAoA over 8 years? That will still be a while. The SSL has around 1.5 years left. I wonder if I try AZEO for a month what my score will be? The 850 is purely for vanity of course.

FICO 08:743 EQ Bankcard from Citi, 764 EX from AmEx, 747 TU from Disc all updated 8/2017

Discover It $8,600 Since 08/2014 // AmEx BCE $23,100 Since 10/2015 // Citi DC $7,000 Since 06/2016 // BoA BBR $1,800 Since 11/2016 // US Bank Cash+ $3,000 Since 11/2016
Message 1 of 15
14 REPLIES 14
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?


@Adidas wrote:

Hello! I was updating my credit spreadsheet (I hadn't looked closely in over a year) and I noticed a 30 point jump that I'm trying to explain. I tried to calculate as many of the useful values as I could from the primer post and color coded the values based on some of my best guesses.

 

Hopefully the table speaks for itself but just in case:

- I have 6 total accounts, 5 CC + 1 installment (SSL) below 9%

- I've never had a missed payment

- No HPs on any bureau since 5/2018

- My oldest account is a CC and my newest is the SSL installment loan

- "Max Indv Util" calculates the max utilization on any card rather than listing them all. So this is the single card max util.

- "% Bal >$0" is basically for AZEO calculation. So for me 20% means 1/5 CC had a balance. There is also less than 9% on the SSL but I didn't count that here so maybe 2/6 technically. I've setup auto bill pays on most of my CC so I don't have to worry about them becoming inactive/closed. Everything is on autopilot that way but it means I'm never AZEO.

- Most columns are in months except the "mix" category where "1" simply means I do have an installment loan in addition to revolving accounts.

- Basically the entire time I think I've been in the "clean, old, thick, no new accounts" scorecard.

 

image.png

 

My questions:

1) What do you think explains the ~30 pt jump last August for FICO 08? Was it the average and oldest installment loan reaching 2.5 years (they're the same loan)? Hopefully some of this data can help with understanding scoring better.

 

2) How long do you think it will take to reach 850 for FICO 08? What will be the determining factor? AAoA over 8 years? That will still be a while. The SSL has around 1.5 years left. I wonder if I try AZEO for a month what my score will be? The 850 is purely for vanity of course.


@Adidas Do you have any closed accounts on your credit report? The loan aging metrics are not well understood yet, unfortunately. Anything is possible, tho. Do you have the negative Reason Codes for August and September?

 

yes number/percentage of accounts with a balance should include the SSL.

Message 2 of 15
Adidas
New Contributor

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?

Thanks for taking a look @Anonymous ! No I don't have any closed accounts. And where do I get reason codes? I currently don't pay for any credit monitoring. I rely on my CCs and the free Experian report to give me scores so I don't usually see reason codes.

FICO 08:743 EQ Bankcard from Citi, 764 EX from AmEx, 747 TU from Disc all updated 8/2017

Discover It $8,600 Since 08/2014 // AmEx BCE $23,100 Since 10/2015 // Citi DC $7,000 Since 06/2016 // BoA BBR $1,800 Since 11/2016 // US Bank Cash+ $3,000 Since 11/2016
Message 3 of 15
Revelate
Moderator Emeritus

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?

What formula are you using for your age calculation?

 

Along with the other questions am curious about that 71 month AAOA and whether it might be 72?

 

Our files look similar though for age I have some inquiries and new accounts. 815 EX 8, 9y 6 month AOOA, 71 month AAOA.  The glaring exception is have 35 total accounts on EX.

Ah drat it is likely a conflated data point for me on May 1, my youngest revolver (youngest account too) will tick over 12 months.  Got a bunch of points recently on EX 2 (like 15) maybe this next month will be F8's turn Smiley Happy




        
Message 4 of 15
Revelate
Moderator Emeritus

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?

Oh second question to 850: I really don't know.

 

Every way I slice my own report and credit score I seem to top out around 835-840 without prettier installment utilization (that will be decades unless I sell the Houston place too and that makes little financial sense at the moment) or some age boundary that I don't think anyone has found yet.




        
Message 5 of 15
Adidas
New Contributor

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?

@Revelate I use the "datedif" function in excel. I have an area where I input all my accounts and their start date and then use the date from the far left under the Discover credit scores to calculate the difference since Discover have been the most precise with their dates.

 

And my AAoA is only 51 when the score jumped. So just over 4 years. My AoOA (which is a revolver) is the one that ticked up to 71 when the score increased.

FICO 08:743 EQ Bankcard from Citi, 764 EX from AmEx, 747 TU from Disc all updated 8/2017

Discover It $8,600 Since 08/2014 // AmEx BCE $23,100 Since 10/2015 // Citi DC $7,000 Since 06/2016 // BoA BBR $1,800 Since 11/2016 // US Bank Cash+ $3,000 Since 11/2016
Message 6 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?


@Adidas wrote:

Thanks for taking a look @Anonymous ! No I don't have any closed accounts. And where do I get reason codes? I currently don't pay for any credit monitoring. I rely on my CCs and the free Experian report to give me scores so I don't usually see reason codes.


@Adidas No problem, my pleasure. Rev raises a very important question: what are the formulas you're using for age? And for utilization? Keep in nind they both use standard rounding, we believe. An error there could throw off results slightly, so that's why we ask. 

OK no closed accounts, sounds like you've got a great profile started. Experian does give you reason codes for version 8, with the free membership, you just click on the score, and most CC scores also give you the negative score factors.

 

Probably too late to go back and get those now, but they might be a good thing to list and keep track of with your scores because we use those to try to reverse engineer reasons for changes. 

 

let me go back and look at your table again with this new knowledge. 

Message 7 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?


@Adidas wrote:

@Revelate I use the "datedif" function in excel. I have an area where I input all my accounts and their start date and then use the date from the far left under the Discover credit scores to calculate the difference since Discover have been the most precise with their dates.

 

And my AAoA is only 51 when the score jumped. So just over 4 years. My AoOA (which is a revolver) is the one that ticked up to 71 when the score increased.


@Adidas guess we were typing at the same time. first thing I'd like to tell you, is Discover has been the most error-prone and presenting credit report information out of all the sources from credit cards I have seen. So that might not want to be your reference point. You would do well do use the data from Experian instead. 

next, are you using the first of the month for the opening dates for each account? If not that's what you have to do. If you open it up on March 31 the opening date as far as algorithm is concerned is March 1. 


I also tend to wonder if it's not 72 months, as that would make sense for age of oldest Revolver. Double check that for me and if you don't mind give us the formula you're using. 

Message 8 of 15
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?

@Adidas You’ve got a couple of things that could be suspect. It could be the age of the oldest Revolver hitting 72 months, it could be the average age of revolving accounts hitting 54 months, or the installment hitting 2.5 may have offered some points, but not that many, imo.

So you could have a conflated Datapoint with gains from any of these 3. I’m hoping that it’s a simple error in your formula or entry and we can get those numbers where they are divisible by 6. I think I do recall something about installment 2.5 years. But again it wasn’t that big.

Message 9 of 15
Revelate
Moderator Emeritus

Re: Cause of 30pt jump? And how long until 850?


@Adidas wrote:

@Revelate I use the "datedif" function in excel. I have an area where I input all my accounts and their start date and then use the date from the far left under the Discover credit scores to calculate the difference since Discover have been the most precise with their dates.

 

And my AAoA is only 51 when the score jumped. So just over 4 years. My AoOA (which is a revolver) is the one that ticked up to 71 when the score increased.


Ah thanks, I misread the data.

 

My own calculations which as near as I can tell have been spot on for EQ/EX for the last 9 and change years I've been here use this set of formulas where Birdman correctly noted the open date for the algorithm appears to be the first of the month in all cases, so really the day doesn't matter only the month:

 

NameDate OpenMonths since Open
BOFA New10/1/11114

 

Months since open where B2 is the date open cell for the tradeline:
=(YEAR(NOW())-YEAR(B2))*12+MONTH(NOW())-MONTH(B2)

 

Then for AAOA I've used:

=ROUNDDOWN(AVERAGE(C2:C22,C24:C37),0)

 

Where the average is of all the tradelines, there's gaps in there like C23 because that tradeline isn't on my Experian report which I pulled the AAOA calc out of.

 

Not as sophisticated but I'd be curious if it matched yours in output.




        
Message 10 of 15
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