@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks everyone. Any techniques other than the SSL?
Go use one of your CC to buy a really nice dinner? Celebrate the burning of the mortgage documents?
With your score currently in the 830 range, there's not much you should be doing. As others have noted, and I'd like to emphasize, that stupid FICO score is only one minor component in your credit profile. Sure, it's a quick snapshot of how your ability to pay looks today, but an 830 score implies you already have virtually no borrowing. FICO measures risk of ability to pay back. With less risk of not being able to pay back loans, your score goes up. As borrowing goes down, your score goes up. Your paid off mortgage means you probably aren't going to be taking on that debt again soon.
Any debt you do take on (including a SSL unless you pay it down immediately) will cause a few points drop, but any debt you take on, if it is significant, is going to go through an underwriting review process where your broader financial situation will be considered. As others have noted, your paid off mortgage will be a positive influence. The fact you have few debt items will be a positive consideration, because it means you are likely to continue to be able to pay off this new debt. And unless you shop for some sort of borrowing, no one is going to pay you to have an 830 or even an 850 FICO score. Or care that it "dropped" to 800. Only you will know you have that score.
Enjoy the paid off mortgage. Enjoy that your scores will drop a bit because you have no open mortgage, and that your monthly cash flow is freed up so you can go to a nice dinner. Your FICO scores will be fine.
@Anonymous wrote:All good points. Thanks. Conclusion that the SSL is a good idea if scores happen to drop too low, but I probably won't need to do that. Another conclusion is that FICO doesn't do a good job of reflecting borrowing ability in the main FICO scores used.
Well since income is explicitly not factored into the algorithm, yeah 
.
I don't know, I've spent so long in the dirty buckets that I will maximize every little thing I can and probably will do that for the rest of my life. There are people that are pretty credit wise and to be sure anything north of 800 is gravy, but as a counter point I feel almost queasy at the thought of leaving easy points on the table which further testing suggests can be sorted for even less than $9 (pay it down to $6 and pay $1 a year or every 11 month or whatever to keep the boogeyman away... i.e. account inactivity fees that Alliant at least states are a thing). That's like $0.12, 12 cents in the first year and it just gets smaller interest than that in the following years. There's nobody who considers that non-trivial cost wise when that's literally change everyone has found lying in the street at one point in their lives.
Guess I'm FICO scarred, or at least skeerd heh.
@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks everyone. Any techniques other than the SSL?
The other low hanging fruit is:
1. letting one revolver report a small balance with others reporting at zero
2. passage of time + no applications for anything
(Although #2 is actually the best of all methods, it's the one I find hardest to implement. I find doing to be much easier than not-doing )
@Revelate wrote:
@driftless wrote:
I am deeply troubled that a $500 loan can replace a mortgage for FICO scoring.Eh. UW > FICO.
All the points I gained in finding the SSL trick to begin with were promptly lost as soon as my mortgage reported. Easy come easy go
Well, once there is an Elephant in your living room, you can pretty much disregard any Ants that may be present, at least until the Elephant is gone...
@Themanwhocan wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@driftless wrote:
I am deeply troubled that a $500 loan can replace a mortgage for FICO scoring.Eh. UW > FICO.
All the points I gained in finding the SSL trick to begin with were promptly lost as soon as my mortgage reported. Easy come easy go
Well, once there is an Elephant in your living room, you can pretty much disregard any Ants that may be present, at least until the Elephant is gone...
Laugh, true that though I think most people were a little surprised by the data which suggested absolutely all installment loans were the same. Equifax has broken out that for years on some of their reports, and TU does similarly in their monitoring solution here at MF, and it's really really hard to get people to accept those aren't reference for the algorithm. Score changes and reason codes are still the only game in town unfortunately, everyone's third party presentation has to be disregarded.
Though interestingly on the ant theory and I missed this datapoint before, the score updates from TU (Your FICO Score changed...) actually give reason codes: pre SSL paydown I had the installment loan balances code at #3, then it disappeared when we found the breakpoint, then it was right back in the #3 slot when my mortgage landed.
Incidentally, would love to see someone repeat my two-step test on a clean file with the MF monitoring and see if it moves between slots but ai ya, wish in one hand...
@Revelate wrote:
@Themanwhocan wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@driftless wrote:
I am deeply troubled that a $500 loan can replace a mortgage for FICO scoring.Eh. UW > FICO.
All the points I gained in finding the SSL trick to begin with were promptly lost as soon as my mortgage reported. Easy come easy go
Well, once there is an Elephant in your living room, you can pretty much disregard any Ants that may be present, at least until the Elephant is gone...
Laugh, true that though I think most people were a little surprised by the data which suggested absolutely all installment loans were the same. Equifax has broken out that for years on some of their reports, and TU does similarly in their monitoring solution here at MF, and it's really really hard to get people to accept those aren't reference for the algorithm. Score changes and reason codes are still the only game in town unfortunately, everyone's third party presentation has to be disregarded.
Though interestingly on the ant theory and I missed this datapoint before, the score updates from TU (Your FICO Score changed...) actually give reason codes: pre SSL paydown I had the installment loan balances code at #3, then it disappeared when we found the breakpoint, then it was right back in the #3 slot when my mortgage landed.
Incidentally, would love to see someone repeat my two-step test on a clean file with the MF monitoring and see if it moves between slots but ai ya, wish in one hand...
You have private mail.
