FICO Experts help!! history dropping, score dropped for no reason, help with utilization

[cl33]

Hello, 

We are looking to buy a house, actually found one this weekend, but have not done pre-approval because I want our FICO score to be as high as possible. I have $2500-3000 that I can put toward cc to help with utilization, but I am not sure where to apply it. What will help us the most? Also, do you happen to know when the amounts are reported? Can I call and ask them to update my report once payments are made?

I requested a hard copy of my experian and TU reports. I noticed that a LOT of my old accounts will drop off later this year. I assume the accounts dropping will negatively affect my score, esp because it's more than one. We would like to find a house soon, but now I feel like we need to move before Aug 2017.

I can apply money to balances and achieve the following below. Is that our best bet? We consolidated to two cards with 0% interest which leaves us with high utiliazation. Currently, the high balances are at 75 and 74%.

Limit    Util        rate

8,000    29.15%   0%   - AX

11,300   75.19%   0%   - Citib

12,000  1.40%   15.74   - BofA

7,000    2.34%    13.49  - Chase

Citibank pulls FICO scores for you -- why did mine drop in Dec & Jan ??

Aug 720

Sept 707

Oct 706

Nov 720

Dec 690

Jan 690

Experian

Oldest accounts: May 1996 (drops 2017), Jan 2003 (drops 2018),

Ax green – 30days late 5/2015 and 6/2015 (our son was born late April) *tried to dispute

Ax blue - current

BofA – closed at consumer request – drops 4/2023

BofA – current

Cap One – closed at grantor request – drops 1/2023

Chase – Drops 10/2017

Chase – drops 10/2018

Chase – current

Citbank – closed at grantor request – does not list drop date – opened acct Dec 1994

Citibank - current

Sears – closed at consumer request – drops 8/2019

SYNCB/World Market – closed – drops 11/2017 - opened Dec 2002

SYNCB/Haverty – open

SYNCB/JCPenny – open *would it help to use this - dormant for over a year

SYNCB/Old Navy – open (recently used last month)

Cap One Auto – drop 4/2021

CarMax Auto – Opened Aug 2007  *reported twice – drops 8/2017

Credit Union Acct – drops 8/2017

Chase Mortgage – drops 6/2018

Chase Mortgage – drops 2/2023

Chase Mortgage – drops 6/2024

3 inquiries

AX – 8/17/2016 – reported until 9/2018

Citib – 11/21/2015 – reported until 12/2017

Citib – 11/10/15 – reported until 12/2017

I can make payments to credit cards today. Please let me know what the ideal utiliz is between the 4 cards.  

Thank you!

[StartingOver10]

I moved to understanding FICO scoring so you can get help with your requests right away. This area is appropriate for your question.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@cl33 wrote:

Hello, 

We are looking to buy a house, actually found one this weekend, but have not done pre-approval because I want our FICO score to be as high as possible. I have $2500-3000 that I can put toward cc to help with utilization, but I am not sure where to apply it. What will help us the most? Also, do you happen to know when the amounts are reported? Can I call and ask them to update my report once payments are made?

I requested a hard copy of my experian and TU reports. I noticed that a LOT of my old accounts will drop off later this year. I assume the accounts dropping will negatively affect my score, esp because it's more than one. We would like to find a house soon, but now I feel like we need to move before Aug 2017.

I can apply money to balances and achieve the following below. Is that our best bet? We consolidated to two cards with 0% interest which leaves us with high utiliazation. Currently, the high balances are at 75 and 74%.

Limit    Util        rate

8,000    29.15%   0%   - AX

11,300   75.19%   0%   - Citib

12,000  1.40%   15.74   - BofA

7,000    2.34%    13.49  - Chase

Citibank pulls FICO scores for you -- why did mine drop in Dec & Jan ??

Aug 720

Sept 707

Oct 706

Nov 720

Dec 690

Jan 690

Experian

Oldest accounts: May 1996 (drops 2017), Jan 2003 (drops 2018),

Ax green – 30days late 5/2015 and 6/2015 (our son was born late April) *tried to dispute

Ax blue - current

BofA – closed at consumer request – drops 4/2023

BofA – current

Cap One – closed at grantor request – drops 1/2023

Chase – Drops 10/2017

Chase – drops 10/2018

Chase – current

Citbank – closed at grantor request – does not list drop date – opened acct Dec 1994

Citibank - current

Sears – closed at consumer request – drops 8/2019

SYNCB/World Market – closed – drops 11/2017 - opened Dec 2002

SYNCB/Haverty – open

SYNCB/JCPenny – open *would it help to use this - dormant for over a year

SYNCB/Old Navy – open (recently used last month)

Cap One Auto – drop 4/2021

CarMax Auto – Opened Aug 2007  *reported twice – drops 8/2017

Credit Union Acct – drops 8/2017

Chase Mortgage – drops 6/2018

Chase Mortgage – drops 2/2023

Chase Mortgage – drops 6/2024

3 inquiries

AX – 8/17/2016 – reported until 9/2018

Citib – 11/21/2015 – reported until 12/2017

Citib – 11/10/15 – reported until 12/2017

I can make payments to credit cards today. Please let me know what the ideal utiliz is between the 4 cards.  

Thank you!

---

This is just one person's opinion, but I don't think you're ready to buy a home; you'll probably wind up being behind the 8 ball every day for the rest of your life if you undertake that kind of burden now.

 But to answer your question, ideal utilization is to have 3 of 4 cards reporting a zero balance, and 1 card reporting a sub-10% balance.

[Anonymous]

AA and that % on those two accounts are hurting you.   My gues is the Cit card needs to get paid down.  I would take my own hard copies an scores (don't let them pull) to my favorite lender and see what they see.  These are real myfico or cct scores not vantage scores?  

[Thomas_Thumb]

---

@cl33 wrote:

Hello, 

We are looking to buy a house, actually found one this weekend, but have not done pre-approval because I want our FICO score to be as high as possible. I have $2500-3000 that I can put toward cc to help with utilization, but I am not sure where to apply it. What will help us the most? Also, do you happen to know when the amounts are reported? Can I call and ask them to update my report once payments are made?

I requested a hard copy of my experian and TU reports. I noticed that a LOT of my old accounts will drop off later this year. I assume the accounts dropping will negatively affect my score, esp because it's more than one. We would like to find a house soon, but now I feel like we need to move before Aug 2017.

I can apply money to balances and achieve the following below. Is that our best bet? We consolidated to two cards with 0% interest which leaves us with high utiliazation. Currently, the high balances are at 75 and 74%.

Limit    Util        rate

8,000    29.15%   0%   - AX

11,300   75.19%   0%   - Citib

12,000  1.40%   15.74   - BofA

7,000    2.34%    13.49  - Chase

Citibank pulls FICO scores for you -- why did mine drop in Dec & Jan ??

Aug 720

Sept 707

Oct 706

Nov 720

Dec 690

Jan 690

Experian

Oldest accounts: May 1996 (drops 2017), Jan 2003 (drops 2018),

I can make payments to credit cards today. Please let me know what the ideal utiliz is between the 4 cards.  

Thank you!

---

Given your situation, the best strategy for Fico score optimization (relative to UT% and # cards reporting specifically) would be:

1) limit # cards reporting a balance to two cards only.

2) Pay down the card reporting a 75% utilization. Get balance below $5500 so utilization is less than 49%. More preferred is to get utilization on all cards below 29% (balance below $3275 on current highest UT % card)

3) Ideally, try to get aggregate utilization below 9% (total balance below $3400 based on your total CL of $38,300)

[NRB525]

OP, do you get balance transfer offers from BofA? If so, I would suggest moving $3k from the Citi card to the BofA card, to put the Citi card just below 50% utilization.

Your overall utilization is not terrible, looks like 29%.

What is your plan to pay down these balances?

When was the consolidation onto two cards? When did the Citi card go over 50% Utilization?

I doubt the closed accounts are going to have any influence on your score. There are a boatload of them, and they will be slowly dropping off, so the few this year should not make much difference.

The concern would be the two lates. The longer you wait, the better off you are because they will age and reduce their effect. That doesn't help a near term home buy, so you may decide to go ahead anyway at a slightly higher APR to get the house you want.

I would switch all daily spend to the AMEX Green card. As a charge card, it will help reduce your reported utilization just a bit.

Does the Citi card offer you a SP CLI? If so I'd try for that to see whether that limit can be raised.

[Anonymous]

---

@cl33 wrote:

Hello, 

We are looking to buy a house, actually found one this weekend, but have not done pre-approval because I want our FICO score to be as high as possible. I have $2500-3000 that I can put toward cc to help with utilization, but I am not sure where to apply it. What will help us the most? Also, do you happen to know when the amounts are reported? Can I call and ask them to update my report once payments are made?

Limit    Util        rate

8,000    29.15%   0%   - AX

11,300   75.19%   0%   - Citib

12,000  1.40%   15.74   - BofA

7,000    2.34%    13.49  - Chase

I can make payments to credit cards today. Please let me know what the ideal utiliz is between the 4 cards.  

Thank you!

---

1. Credit cards report balance and status when statements are cut, typically 5-7 days after your bill due date. Some have been able to request an update to be pushed to their credit reports on various lenders, I haven't had any luck with this and have had to be patient for statement cycles.

2. The 75% uril is damaging your score. The AX needs to come down to 10% or lower, but it's not too bad at 30% compared to 75%. I would put all of your money into the Citi, less the small balances on BoA and Chase to get those to 0. Get that Citi down to 30%, then get the AX to below 10%, then the Citi to below 10%, and you should be okay. Ultimately, you'd want less than half reporting a 10% balance, with less than 30% overall.

[cl33]

Thank you all so much for the assistance, it is very much appreciated. 

I decided to reach out to a friend of a friend who works as a loan officer this morning. He was kind enough to do a quick analysis and my scores came back above 700 (718 & 722 highest) - so, I am averaging 720. That was a surprise. It is huge relief knowing that we have options available when it comes time to buy a house. We have a good amount saved for a down payment, which is helpful.

I am still focused on improving my score and reducing the utilization. The 75% is obviously the first concern. It is high because we transferred balances to it for the 0% interest. I was planning to pay off the 2 small balances so that they are zero. I was considering transferring some from the Citib to BofA to reduce the 75%, but it may make sense to leave it alone and just focus on paying down 75%. 

I was concerned about the accounts aging off, but feel better now having read the responses. I was concerned it would drop my score considererably. 

[Anonymous]

---

@cl33 wrote:

I was concerned about the accounts aging off, but feel better now having read the responses. I was concerned it would drop my score considererably. 

---

Can you clarify for us something?  It has to do with a factor called Age of Oldest Account.  That's a completely different factor from Average Age of Accounts.  Age of Oldest is an important factor, because it is used in something called scorecard assignment.

Right now you have an awesome value for Age of Oldest.  As far as I can tell, it is either about 20 years old (from an account opened in May 1996) or perhaps even older (from a Citi card opened in Dec 1994).

I want you to make an assumption.  Assume that all of your closed accounts will drop off your report exactly 10 years after they were closed.  Assume that this will happen even if you do not see a projected close date.  If 10 years has already happened, assume the account could fall off next week.  This is a very fair assumption to make.  You may get lucky and they don't fall off then, but you should not PLAN on being lucky.

Given that assumption, what will your Age of Oldest Account be in (say) November of this year?  I am trying to suss out how much this scoring factor is going to drop.  If it drops from 21.5 years to 6 years, that's a big concern.  If it drops from 21.5 years to 16 years, it probably isn't.

[Anonymous]

---

@cl33 wrote:

I decided to reach out to a friend of a friend who works as a loan officer this morning. He was kind enough to do a quick analysis and my scores came back above 700 (718 & 722 highest) - so, I am averaging 720.

---

Can you clarify for us whether this loan officer is an LO who specializes in mortgages?  I am guessing he is, but you don't say for sure.  Mortgage loans use very different scoring models.  So you may want to confirm with him that he pulled your mortgage scores, rather than the often used FICO 8 scores (which other types of loan officers might use).

While you are at it, you should ask him whether him checking your scores will result in what is called a "hard inquiry."  If he was a mortgage loan officer pulling your scores, then almost certainly that pull did result in an inquiry, one for each of the three credit bureaus.  If so, it's unfortunate that you went that route, since the hard inquiry will likely damage each score a small amount for the next 365 days.  We could have suggested a way for you to find out what your mortgage scores were without a hard inquiry.

If a hard inquiry was done, you should plan on your scores being about 5 points lower on each bureau.  The scoring damage will begin 30 days from now now and will last for another 11 months after that.