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My DW's youngest account (a credit card) turned 1year old today. I'm an AU on her card and it is also my youngest account. I pulled the $1 CCT 3B F8s last night and got our free monthly Fico 8s from experian.com today. Result:
Ex F8 | 10/31 | 11/01 |
Me | 813 | 813 |
DW | 813 | 823 |
We are married since 28 years, haven't moved for 27 years and are AUs on virtually all of of each others card. So far I always thought Fico 8 fully counts my AU cards. For example my total utilization, not counting AU cards, went from below 9% to over 10% two months ago and I did not see a drop in my Fico 8's. Could it be that AU cards can count for utilization but are always excluded from AoYA?
I will refresh my Fico 8s at CCT in six days and report the results on my TU and Eq F8s
@Anonymous wrote:My DW's youngest account (a credit card) turned 1year old today. I'm an AU on her card and its is also my youngest account. I pulled the $1 CCT 3B F8s last night and get our free monthly Fico 8s from experian.com today. Result:
Ex F8 10/31 11/01 Me 813 813 DW 813 823
We are married since 28 years, haven't moved for 27 years and are AUs on virtually all of of each others card. So far I always thought Fico 8 fully counts my AU cards. For example my total utilization, not counting AU cards, went from below 9% to over 10% two months ago and I did not see a drop in my Fico 8's. Could it be that AU cards can count for utilization but are always excluded from AoYA?
I will refresh my Fico 8s at CCT in six days and report the results on my TU and Eq F8s
Thanks for the info.
@Anonymous wrote:
Do you have a younger account on your CR that isn't on hers? Perhaps her AoYA reached 12 months, but yours didn't.
As I said in my original post, her account is also my youngest. My second youngest is one of my own and is 14 months old.
Unfortunately, since I'm using several 0% balance transfer offers , I cannot use the "All zero penalty" test to see whether Fico 8 counts my AU accounts.
I would not rule out the possibility that FICO 8 is ignoring some or all of the AU accounts. The reason you had initially ruled that possibility out is because your credit monitoring service (Credit Check Total) implies on its front-end "summary" page that the AU cards are counted toward the total credit limit.
The front-end "summary" page of a CMS is no guide to what the true FICO algorithm is doing on the back end. That summary page was made by programmers who work for CCT, not for FICO. Even the summary page for the myFICO Ultimate CMS cannot be used to reliably infer what the back-end scoring algorithm is doing, especially with respect to AU accounts.
There is, however, a fairly straightforward way to test whether an AU account is being ignored by FICO 8. I described it recently on another thread. Let me know if you want to know more about it.
PPS. You and I were posting our comments at the same time. I see that you know about the All Zero test for AUs. Until you are able to implement that test there's no way to know what is going on (as far as I can tell) though I'd lean toward assuming that you have one or more AU accounts being ignore by FICO 8. That happens a lot with FICO 8, and it sounds like the simplest explanation.
@Anonymous wrote:The reason you had initially ruled that possibility out is because your credit monitoring service (Credit Check Total) implies on its front-end "summary" page that the AU cards are counted toward the total credit limit.
I never pay much attention to the summary pages of credit montoring services. In fact, experian gives me different information on different pages. Some pages include the AU accounts others do not.
The utilization information I refered to in my first post are based on my own calculation. Two months ago my util (counting or not counting AU accounts) was below 9 %. I did a 0% balance transfer into my bank account. The util counting AU accounts stayed below 9%, but not counting the AU accounts rose above 10%. And I did not notice any major change in Fico scores at the time. But I just realized that at the same time the youngest of my own accounts turned 12 months olds. So there might have been some offsetting effects.
Until you are able to implement that test there's no way to know what is going on (as far as I can tell) though I'd lean toward assuming that you have one or more AU accounts being ignore by FICO 8. That happens a lot with FICO 8, and it sounds like the simplest explanation.
Implementing AZEO would cost me hundreds of dollars. I'm curious about the Fico algorithm, but not that curious.
I agree, it looks like Fico 8 ignores my AU accounts, but that does really surpise me. If they ignore my AU accounts, I don't see how they could count anybody's AU accounts.
The "anti-abuse" module for FICO 8 was tacked on very late (just shortly before the model's release or perhaps even after). FICO had planned to ignore all AU accounts entirely in the new model but there was such a wild reaction against that idea (I call it the Housewives Rebellion -- people who's only cards were AUs on their husband's cards) that FICO backed off and came up with its AA module (the details of which are cloaked in the deepest secrecy).
The point being is that it was developed fast and no doubt makes mistakes: e.g. people like you and your wife are supposed to be the people FICO wants to leave in. Likewise it often makes mistakes and leaves some people in who FICO likely wanted to exclude.
Great insight on your part about what happened with your utilization and your AoYA. There could indeed have been an offsetting effect.
I of course have no dog in this race and would not be surprised if FICO 8 counts all your AUs (or if it counts some and not others, or if it counts none). I am just saying that we have confounding factors and until we have a clear test we cannot really know.
Is your current utilization (not counting the AU cards) still greater than 9.001% with the utilization counting the AUs still under 8.99%? If so, you may want to repeat your test again in 2019 when you approach a month with no confounding factors. And of course, only if you feel like it.
Is your current utilization (not counting the AU cards) still greater than 9.001% with the utilization counting the AUs still under 8.99%? If so, you may want to repeat your test again in 2019 when you approach a month with no confounding factors. And of course, only if you feel like it.
I'm financing my kids' college education on 0% balance transfers (rather than using my savings or my Heloc). The very last tuition payment is due in December and I just did another 0% balance transfer to my bank account. Once it reports, also my utilization counting the AU cards will be above 10%. If my Fico 8 scores do not drop then, it would be futher evidence that Fico 8 ignores my AU cards.
But after that my util (counting or not counting AU cards) will stay above 10% for quite a while. So I won't be able to do any more test.