Fico Score increase?

Anonymous · ‎01-27-2019

Hello all. I feel like a credit failure. Long story short: I made some terrible credit decision in my early 20's. Found MyFico in my late 20's and got my fico score from the mid 500s up to the low 700s. Then a few things in my life happened including creditonebank saying I hadn't made a payment in 8months(I was making minium payments, so im not sure where the money was going) and getting sick requiring a 2 day hospital stay with no insurance, and just personal life taking a dump. Anyways, I'm back in the mid 500s again and back here to try and fix my situation a little at a time. I'll probably do this a post at a time.

So first subject: I recently(about a week ago now, i think) paid off my only credit card in good standing(Chase United). Its showing, if i'm reading it correctly, that I have a zero balance now yet, my score has not gone up. Is that not enough to get a score increase? Or am I expecting it too soon?

Thanks to any advice and look foreward to getting back on track with the help of all you folks.

Cheers

Anonymous · ‎01-27-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
Hello all. I feel like a credit failure. Long story short: I made some terrible credit decision in my early 20's. Found MyFico in my late 20's and got my fico score from the mid 500s up to the low 700s. Then a few things in my life happened including creditonebank saying I hadn't made a payment in 8months(I was making minium payments, so im not sure where the money was going) and getting sick requiring a 2 day hospital stay with no insurance, and just personal life taking a dump. Anyways, I'm back in the mid 500s again and back here to try and fix my situation a little at a time. I'll probably do this a post at a time.

So first subject: I recently(about a week ago now, i think) paid off my only credit card in good standing(Chase United). Its showing, if i'm reading it correctly, that I have a zero balance now yet, my score has not gone up. Is that not enough to get a score increase? Or am I expecting it too soon?

Thanks to any advice and look foreward to getting back on track with the help of all you folks.

Cheers

To be clear, I know you said the Chase card is in good standing but is it your only card? Do you have other cards that are closed with balances? Realistically, if you pay all of your revolving accounts to 0 then you get a scoring penalty.

Anonymous · ‎01-27-2019

Credit scores are based on the information in something called credit reports. Each report comes from a credit bureau. The three bureaus are Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

Your card reports a new balance to each bureau on the day that the credit card statement appears. It then takes 2-6 business days for the bureau to update the new balance on its database.

So the answer is that it could take a long time before the score changes. Here is an example. Suppose your next credit card statement is on Feb 18 and you paid the card to zero on Jan 20. Your $0 balance will not get reported until Feb 20. A particular database might not get updated until March 1. Your credit monitoring service might not pull your score for a few weeks after that.

What tool are you using to get your scores?

Anonymous · ‎01-27-2019

Sorry to hear this. That's why I'm scared of closing my CreditOne card because I heard they're jerks when it comes to that.

It's good that you paid off your good standing account, but whatever is in bad standing will definitely need some love. Keeping your good account in good condition is mostly maintaining your score from getting any worse.

The late payments are probably what has given you the biggest hit as that's 35% of your score. If you've been making regular minimum payments then I'd fight that or send some kind of payment confirmation proof to clean up your credit.

Anonymous · ‎01-28-2019

I have some seriously deliquent accounts from as far as 6 or 7 years back. Closed accounts with balances. I'm not expecting a huge score increase or anything at all either. Was just looking for something lol

My next question is do I let things fall off or pay stuff off? I don't have the funds to PIF and I've read/heard that settling won't lead to deletion.