FICO Simulator

[Ellifino]

On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being a magic 8 ball and 10 being the particle detection equipment at CERN, how accurate would you say the simulator is, in your experience?

[Anonymous]

4

[taxi818]

I give it a 2 tops. Why?  I realized it's looking at report from specific date.  Not current data. Example. I got3 b monitoring. When I simulate. It's looking at data from August 10th. Even so much more credit and things that dropped off. It is even showing fico score from the not now. Maybe if I give them another 20 spot would be better. But scores are updating. Just not report. 

[AzaleaB]

It ranges from 1 to 8 so maybe overall 4. I run the simulator usually after getting a new report. Sometimes it's close but I don't know about now. According to EX and EQ simulator, if I pay just $10 (yes, ten dollars) of my balance, my score jumps 10 points! I don't think so...

[Anonymous]

Thanks for that. I was wondering if my simulator wasn't working. It uses my scores from a month ago. Pretty useless as it is. I'd say it's below a magic 8 ball and more on par with reading cow entrails!

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@taxi818 wrote:

I give it a 2 tops. Why?  I realized it's looking at report from specific date.  Not current data. Example. I got3 b monitoring. When I simulate. It's looking at data from August 10th. Even so much more credit and things that dropped off. It is even showing fico score from the not now. Maybe if I give them another 20 spot would be better. But scores are updating. Just not report. 

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[Ubuntu]

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Primrose wrote:

Thanks for that. I was wondering if my simulator wasn't working. It uses my scores from a month ago. Pretty useless as it is. I'd say it's below a magic 8 ball and more on par with reading cow entrails!

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I'd rank the simulators just ahead of the magic 8 ball but behind the I Ching. Entrails are way more accurate

[BeeH11]

Glad this was asked and answered. I was wondering about this too. I got my scores yesterday and was playing around with the simulator. Some of the things I thought were too good to be true (like seriously dropping my utilization and my scores jumping 100+ points).

[Anonymous]

Utilization does have a major impact though. 35% I believe. Good thing is though that it's a snapshot each month. So if your utilization is high one month, your scores go down but pay it down, utilization goes down and your scores shoot back up. There's no 'memory' month to month for utilization.

[NRB525]

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@Ellifino wrote:

On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being a magic 8 ball and 10 being the particle detection equipment at CERN, how accurate would you say the simulator is, in your experience?

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Do you mean the Credit Score Estimator, available elsewhere here on MyFICO, where there are three pages of questions to answer, leading to one "likely range"?

I found the ranges quite wide, so took some time to go through several (a hundred tries) specific iterations, tracking what factor I changed on each iteration, then the final score range of each. From that, I have some theories about what really will move the needle on a score, particuarly for items I can control like % Util, Number of Accts with Balance, and $ of Util.

So while the specific score result is too vague for any one combination, the likelihood that I can drive a directional change from a particular action seems feasible.

In that sense, it is like the CERN particle accelerator, and FICO is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: The closer you try to nail down the FICO, the less certain it is (and the more it oscillates month to month), but averages tend to appear as all those particles (postings on MyFICO for example) are thrown through the MyFICO forums (the CERN accelerator).

[MarineVietVet]

I've never used any kind of simulator/estimator/guesstimator.

How can there be any kind of accuracy when there is not full access to your credit profile?