Credit Score Boost

[CivalV]

My scores have been up and down for the last couple of months. I received a MyFico alert of balance changed and delinquency changes. Apparently my TU score increased nearly 20+ points and there was a balance decrease of only $134. I can imagine if I further lowered my high UTL that my scores would be very close to the 700s. Has anyone else experienced this? There will be another $1000 decrease at the end of this month. I will have 5 cards reporting $0 & another 5 accounts with low balances, 1 being my Self Lender account. All accounts are in good standing.

[xaximus]

The threshold for UTI is relatively simple. 8.9%, 28.9%, 48.9%, 68.9% and 88.9%. As you drop under each threshold, your score will increase.

[Anonymous]

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@CivalV wrote:
Apparently my TU score increased nearly 20+ points and there was a balance decrease of only $134. I can imagine if I further lowered my high UTL that my scores would be very close to the 700s.

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Score changes are related to percentage changes rather than dollar changes, as the previous poster mentioned.  The alert you received for the balance paydown may or not be tied to the score change.  To illustrate the point I'm getting to, though, let's assume that the 20 point increase was directly tied to paying down your balance $134.  It's important to understand that you can't try to correlate other dollar changes to the same score changes.  So basically, paying down another $134 doesn't mean another 20 points, etc.

It's possible that someone could pay down $10 on one card and see a 10 point gain, then a week later pay down $3000 on another card and see zero score gain at all.  How?  Well, perhaps the $10 paydown was on a card that had a $21 balance on a $200 limit.  The $10 paydown brings the balance down to $11, below the 8.9% threshold.  If the $3000 paydown was on a card with a $3100 balance on a $35,000 limit (paying it down to $100) the before and after [paydown] utilization percentages are both below 8.9%, so no scoring benefit would expect to be received.

[NRB525]

OP what are the delinquencies you have on your file?

[Anonymous]

Congratulations on the score improvement! Those are always gratifying notifications to receive. It shows you're doing something right!

As xaximus and BrutalBodyShots said, the score doesn't respond predictably (at least not as we'd predict it). It works kind of like this: If you're playing Monopoly, and you roll a 3 and you pass Go, you collect $200. The next time you roll a 12 and you think, that's four times as many; I should collect $800!  But you don't collect anything. And then you're frustrated because you can't figure out how it works. That's FICO scoring. Every once in awhile, you pass some threshold (like Go in Monopoly) and your score moves. But you might have a long way to go before your reach the next threshold.

[Anonymous]

I recently paid down quite a bit of debt myself, and i been on pins and needles to see the changes go into affect on my score, im hoping to get up to about a 20 point plus gain, so seeing those threshold % posted above is awsome, as im going from 31% UTI, down to about 6% uti

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

...as im going from 31% UTI, down to about 6% uti

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Congratulations! You could potentially see a pretty satisfying boost (and even more so if part of that was paying a couple of cards down to 0%).

I put $10,000 on a card last month (for part of a major purchase). I usually pay off my balance before the next statement, but this month I didn't, because I figured, if they want to finance $10,000 for me for a month for free, I'll let them. I let a couple of other large-ish balances report, too, as much to see what would happen as anything. It brought my usage from single digits up to over 30% and my TransUnion score dropped from 826 to 750! I'm not worried, though. Now that everything is paid off, it'll all be back to where it ought to be in a month or two.

That's a relatively high score with very clean credit, so that kind of usage might make a bigger difference for me than for you. But it does give an idea of how much of an impact it can have.

[Anonymous]

Plip, the utilization change that you referenced was it aggregate in addition to the single card or were you just speaking about the single card? The score drop you referenced seems pretty significant for a relatively small change in utilization percentage wise even though it was a lot of dollars IMO.

[Anonymous]

Brutal,

I typically allow just one or two cards to report balances (out of six cards with combined limits of around $50,000). Last month I had one card report just under its limit of $10,000. Another card reported about $4,500 out of its $10,000 limit. A third reported nearly $2,000 out of $10,000. And a fourth reported $600 (I think that one has around a $10,000 limit, too). (Yeah, everything seems to be $10,000.)

So I went from less than $1,000 and about 2% the month before to about $17,000 and 34% and with one card pretty much completely maxed out. I just paid off the $10,000 and it reported (none of the others have come due/reported), and my Transunion jumped to 795, still about 30 points below what it was. But that still leaves me at about 14% util, so I expect to get more movement as the others report.

I have been drawing on a line of credit, and that could possibly have crossed a threshold last month. So that may have impacted it, too. But I really don't think it made a significant difference. That should get paid down to 0 in a month or two, so we'll see.

(In case it seems strange to have four different cards in use, one is strickly for business, one is my personal card, one is Amazon, and the fourth is the one my wife likes to use.)

[CreditRebuilder2020]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I recently paid down quite a bit of debt myself, and i been on pins and needles to see the changes go into affect on my score, im hoping to get up to about a 20 point plus gain, so seeing those threshold % posted above is awsome, as im going from 31% UTI, down to about 6% uti

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Nothing better than clearing out balances and watching those scores go through the roof!