Doing everything right but not much progress in scores

[WINH]

My score has fluctuated from 701 to 715 and is now at 711 in the past 13 months.  5-6 years ago had some issues with too much credit card debt and worked out debt reductions with the card companies.  I have not missed a payment ever on house or cars and have not missed any payments in 5 years.  I have worked off nearly 20,000 in credit card debt the last year and have less than 1%  ever on my cards now for the last 4 months.  Score just doesn't move hardly at all and had fallen 4 points in the last month.  Now new credit or inquiries or balances am very confused, 

[Debtrecycler]

I am in the same boat--that is until an erroneous collection appeared on my report then it nose-dived ( I am ordering a new one now that it has been deleted) However, up until now, I have been stagnating in mid 700 territory and cannot figure out why.  The only thing I can figure (from reading through old posts) is that perhaps the mistakes from a number of years ago are affecting scores more than we think.  I read yesterday that a few people had significant increases when really old 90 day lates dropped off.  Throughout the boards people say that lates have less and less of an impact---maybe they have more impact than we think--especially when we get into the "better" territory.  It seems Fico is less forgiving of those with higher scores.

Good luck 

[JoeBJay20]

Well there are a lot of things that factor into your credit report.  Your credit report is placed in a "bucket" with people with similar credit histories as yours, in terms of age of accounts, balances, debt, derogs, and other factors.  This brings a bit of fairness into the system in that people with 2 year credit histories aren't directly compared to people with 20 year histories, and people with major derogs aren't directly compared with people with pristine credit histories.  As your credit history changes, you move between buckets.  This is one reason your report can improve but your score doesn't change.  You could have a relatively great report in one bucket, yet that same report would be average or worse in a different bucket.  Therefore, which bucket you're in limits the degree to which  your score can rise.  If you're in a major derog bucket, there is a cap to how high your score can rise within that bucket.  Also, as your report improves, the algorithms are less and less forgiving of major baddies.  This is why it's not uncommon for people to see their scores rise to a certain point and then stop, and then rise dramatically when a major derog falls off. 

[WINH]

I have a long credit history but fell off the boat for only a short 1 year out of 38.  I was hoping that after 5 years the derog info would be much less of a factor considering everything I am doing should be helping the scores but didn't think it would be this slow.

[haulingthescoreup]

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WINH wrote:
My score has fluctuated from 701 to 715 and is now at 711 in the past 13 months.  5-6 years ago had some issues with too much credit card debt and worked out debt reductions with the card companies.  I have not missed a payment ever on house or cars and have not missed any payments in 5 years.  I have worked off nearly 20,000 in credit card debt the last year and have less than 1%  ever on my cards now for the last 4 months.  Score just doesn't move hardly at all and had fallen 4 points in the last month.  Now new credit or inquiries or balances am very confused, 

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How bad were the baddies? Lots of lates, or did they go to collections and/or charge-offs? I would have thought that your score would be doing better, too.

On your most recent report, look on screen 2 at the balance scale, with the negatives on the left, and the positives on the right. Let the positives part go; that's pretty much just warm fuzzies. What are the negatives, listed in order?

And HUGE congrats on paying off your CC debt. Wonderful job!

[Anonymous]

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@WINH wrote:
My score has fluctuated from 701 to 715 and is now at 711 in the past 13 months.  5-6 years ago had some issues with too much credit card debt and worked out debt reductions with the card companies.  I have not missed a payment ever on house or cars and have not missed any payments in 5 years.  I have worked off nearly 20,000 in credit card debt the last year and have less than 1%  ever on my cards now for the last 4 months.  Score just doesn't move hardly at all and had fallen 4 points in the last month.  Now new credit or inquiries or balances am very confused, 

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Yet more examples, unfortunately, of the bizarre and arcane workings behind FICO credit scoring.

On a positive note, if the CCCs were using something like Advantage or Plus scoring from the CRAs, you can be certain your scores would be overall relatively lower compared to others. The goal of new scoring algorithms is more subprime borrowers.

[WINH]

The confusing part is that I had the one really bad year out of nearly 40 years and nothing even remotely bad happening in the last 5 years of watching every penny.  It almost seems that you have to beg on bended knee just to get a few points back.  No bankruptcies but a number of derogs from that one year.  It almost seems more logical to go bankrupt and start over than trying to climb from the derogs not much difference in accumulated points.

[Anonymous]

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@WINH wrote:

The confusing part is that I had the one really bad year out of nearly 40 years and nothing even remotely bad happening in the last 5 years of watching every penny.  It almost seems that you have to beg on bended knee just to get a few points back.  No bankruptcies but a number of derogs from that one year.  It almost seems more logical to go bankrupt and start over than trying to climb from the derogs not much difference in accumulated points.

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All too true, unfortunately. Despite all the rhetoric about people running up CC debt on shopping sprees, and then BKing it away, the reality is quite the opposite. The data Liz Warren has reported, in her various books and articles, is quite eye opening.