Credit Simulator is Garbage

[Anonymous]

The my FICO credit simulator said if I paid down $15k in credit card debt my score would jump up 50/40/35 points across the different bureaus. I have done this and it has reported and my score changed 6 points!!! Extremely disappointed. Anyone have any insight? Wouldn’t paying down a significant amount of debt boost my score?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
The my FICO credit simulator said if I paid down $15k in credit card debt my score would jump up 50/40/35 points across the different bureaus. I have done this and it has reported and my score changed 6 points!!! Extremely disappointed. Anyone have any insight? Wouldn’t paying down a significant amount of debt boost my score?

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Depending on your CC limits and/or other types of recent activity, it's possible that it wouldn't change them at all.

If you have high enough limits, your utilization as a % could have been low enough carrying the $15k of debt that paying it off wouldn't have created that much a change percentage wise.

If you have a handful of new inquiries or new accounts, the benefits of the 15k utilization reduction are being offset by dings for inquiries or new accounts.

Lastly, if your scores are pretty solid to start with, there isn't as much room for potential movement for activity such as this. (I, on the other hand, have a BK reporting so my scores are ultra sensitive to util)

You are right though in needing to take the simulator results with a truckload of salt . . . 

[Anonymous]

To dovetail on what Steeler said, the folks here can offer you much better advice than the simulator will.  To do that they'd need a complete list of your revolving accounts, with their balances and credit limits.  Like this:

Card 1.  Balance = ____    Limit = ____

Card 2.  Balance = ____    Limit = ____

Card 3.  Balance = ____    Limit = ____

etc.

Exclude closed accounts with a zero balance.  Do include closed accounts if there is a positive balance.  Add a brief comment noting that the account is closed.

Also let us know if an account is a charge card or an AU card.  Finally let us know if any account has a 0% promotion running.

One source of the problem you experienced might be that you might have left at least one card with a high utilization.  The best strategy (for scoring benefit) is to pay all cards down to 87% (each card and its limit considered by itself), then all cards individually to 67%, then all cards individually to 47% -- and then you can pay them off using whatever method is easiest.  Certainly your goal should be to pay off all revolving debt.

[Anonymous]

One thing I have recently noticed on the Credit Simulator is that even after I paid down about $7k worth of debt and the payments posted in myFico - my util percentage calculation hadn't changed. It's almost like it's delayed in updating. Maybe that is having an effect on your score update? I have no clue otherwise. I'm waiting for another $2800 drop around 04/29 and if I don't see the util percentage drop then, I may pay for a report update and see if that helps. 

[SoCalifornia]

Well, yeah. 🤷🏽‍♂️

[KELSTAR]

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@Anonymous wrote:
The my FICO credit simulator said if I paid down $15k in credit card debt my score would jump up 50/40/35 points across the different bureaus. I have done this and it has reported and my score changed 6 points!!! Extremely disappointed. Anyone have any insight? Wouldn’t paying down a significant amount of debt boost my score?

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Was this assumption of increase in your scores according to FICO SIMULATOR over 24 months paying your bills on time( which is the default Simulation 1) and then adding SIMULATION 2?(which could be paying down 15k in credit card debt)

If so, no doubt the 24 months of aging made a huge difference also.

In my experience, the FICO SIMULATOR has been very accurate.

[SoCalifornia]

Quite the sig @KELSTAR.

[Anonymous]

All simulators are garbage, not just the one here on MF. 

[Anonymous]

It does seem to be wrong/flawed. I just look at the score simulator to imagine myself with higher scores, nothing else.

For example, it shows if I pay down $65 every month, of my $1565 credit card balances for 24 months, that my scores will go up +65, +40, +40. Well it’s impossible to just pay $65 a month because there’s 4 credit cards. Paying the min payment alone would be over $100 or so. That calculation would only work if 1) It’s only 1 credit card, and 2) You stop using your credit card for 24 months to try your best to honor the simulation as much as possible.

[Anonymous]

Simulators aren't wrong or flawed, they are simply only using a handful (say, 10) pieces of profile data to spit out a potential score change when in reality your score comes from an infinite amount of pieces of data when you consider their relationship to one another.  It's simply impossible for a simulator that's given a very tiny input to be reliable when a real score comes from a full CR.  For some people the simulator gets it right.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  For others, it's best to simply ignore simulators all together and simply ask questions on this forum to get ideas of what may happen to your scores if you do X or Y.