@dynamicvb wrote:I found this forum a little over a year ago when my scores where in the low 600’s. At the time I had several accounts and lates along with a chapter 13 on my reports. I also had no open accounts of any type except my student loans which are in good standing.
i worked on getting the accounts that where incorrect off my reports, opened up a secured Capone and got my scores up enough to get a mortgage which is almost a year old now. I’ve since opened up an Amex, Discover, and another CapOne Savor One. I closed the secured CapOne a couple of months ago when I got the Savor. I also had to purchase a vehicle in Feb as mine died. So I have 5 accounts all under a year.
Oldest is 13 years, youngest is 2 months, and average is between 7-8 years depending n the CRA. All the baddies are now gone either through disputes or age. I have one small paid medical that only shows on EQ. Other than that all my reports have no negatives. When I started this process I set a goal of getting them all to 750. I’ve obtained that on two of the three and TU is pretty close. I do have 40k of available credit now with a little ove 9% overall utilization. I needed to carry a little balance at 0%apr on my discover and it’s right at 18% as of last reporting. I will be taking it down enough in the next month to bring my overall to around 7%. The Savor reported a small balance last time but will be back to 0 by next reporting window.
Since I’ve achieved my 750 goal I’ve set a new one to get to 800. Looking at the simulators( I know not to believe them) the say if I just build payment history for the next year then all three should be well over 800. They don’t give me as much if I just pay down the discover in the next few months like I’m planning to do., but I’m more interested in ensuring I don’t catch any interest on this card than scores. I do prefer to have less debt than a better fico score. The bankruptcy taught me that one.
I am at 2-8 inquires across the CRAs and will be down to no more than two scorable on each CRA(0 on TU) by September. So those reaching a year should give me a few points. I’m just wondering if there is anything else I can do other than lowering the CC utilization and the utilization on my truck or mortgage to help me get into the 800 range by the end of the year. Thoughts?
The main things you can do now to get to 800 are:
1. not apply for anything
2. get the overall utilization down as you are planning to do
3. make sure no individual account reports at >28%
4. pay your truck down, although you won't get a big boost until you're down to 9%
The main things for you are (a) the passage of time + (b) no new applications.
@DIYcredit wrote:Sometimes let's say an inactive account might have been reported in the payment history for a credit account as "no data available".This is a neutral reporting I would much rather be reported as "paid as agreed'.
Paid as agreed, OK, ND, *, etc. all count the same AFAIK... all basic representations by various bureaus that are equivalent.
As far as scoring goes BBS got it right: open/closed, open date, deliquency yes/no and if yes severity, and maybe DOLA are basically the only things that seem to matter for the algorithms on OC tradelines.
@Anonymous wrote:
@dynamicvb wrote:Since I’ve achieved my 750 goal I’ve set a new one to get to 800. Looking at the simulators( I know not to believe them) the say if I just build payment history for the next year then all three should be well over 800.
Building payment history is kind of a bogus term, something whoever came up with that portion of the simulator probably thought sounded good. Building payment history sort of sounds like you make purchases and then pay them off (on time of course) and continue to do this over a length of time. That act as no bearing at all on FICO scores any more than just having the account and making an occasional purchase every 4-6 months and paying it off. What can help your scores is the passage of time, where your 3 age of accounts factors will grow assuming no other new accounts are added. As your scores naturally increase over time, it's beacause your age of accounts factors are increasing, not because you're "building payment history." Hopefully that makes sense.
BBS, playing with the simulator again today. Decided to take another approach and just did the Pay all my bills on time for 12 months and the result is the same as what it said for paying down my balances. also ran the one for aging my credit report and it was pretty close too with all of them just over 800. It does seem age I what all these are predicting as a reason for score improvement regardless of what the front end says. Just an observation I thought I would share.
