How Many Credit Cards For Best Credit Score

[Anonymous]

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@Thomas_Thumb

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Fico scoring looks at the severity of lates, recency of lates and quantity of lates in absolute terms. The models do not use a % of total payments metric for lates.

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Right on above.  So if we assume two thick files (taking "thin" out of the equation) and both files have exactly 1 negative item of the same severity/age, we can say that both files would be impacted similarly by the negative.  Whether this is a profile with 15 accounts or 25 accounts shouldn't make a difference.

[FireMedic1]

So on MyFICO I have 1 30 day late 5 years old and they give a %. This is EX. EQ & TU say 91%. Active accounts below. Oldest 22 yrs. 14 accounts listed open and closed. But lists the BK?

[2IMPROVE1]

Did your score initially drop each time you added a card?

[Medic981]

Ultimately, what you need to improve your FICO scores are three open credit cards in good standing and one open installment loan in good standing such as a car, home, student, personal, share secured, or credit building loan. This combination is what the myFICO score theorists here have determined is what you need for optimal credit building and FICO score. You can have more CCs and more installment loans, however, this will not increase your FICO scores.

Next, you will need to pay in full all of your credit card balances each month, before the posting date, except one. This is called the All Zero Except One (AZEO) method. The one credit card you allow to post a balance needs to be less than 8.9% of the credit limit of the card. So using one card each month to buy lunch, letting it report and then paying in full will maximize FICO scoring.

The installment loan will have its greatest impact on your FICO score when the amount owed is at its smallest such as a few months before the loan is paid in full.

[kxkxkxx]

My credit is having a smooth increase..

I have 3 cards from CapOne

Discover

Union Bank

Macys

Kohls

Lending Club Loan

Car Loan

Been seeing a nice steady increase every month with this mix.

I did notice when my Dept Store cards get a credit line increase, my score jumps a tad...so, even if you owe $0...keep asking for those credit increases to get a 4-6 point jump.

[Anonymous]

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@kxkxkxx

I did notice when my Dept Store cards get a credit line increase, my score jumps a tad...so, even if you owe $0...keep asking for those credit increases to get a 4-6 point jump.

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Credit line increases do not increase credit scores.  The only way they can indirectly increase credit scores are if you have balances on your card(s) and the CLI causes your utilization to drop across a threshold.  If you don't cross a utilization threshold, there would be no score increase.  If you have all zero balances or your aggregate utilization is already under 8.9%, all the credit line increases in the world won't raise your score even a single point.

For example, someone has 8 credit cards each with a $5000 limit for $40k in total limits.  6 of them have $0 balances and two of them have $1000 balances.  Aggregate utilization in this example is at 5% and individual card utilization (max) is 20%.  If this person were to get a CLI taking one of their cards from $5000 to $10000, aggregate utilization would still be 5% for FICO scoring purposes (even though it's 4.x%) and there would be zero increase.  Even if the CLI was on one of the cards with a balance and that individual card utilization went from 20% to 10%, that wouldn't result in a score increase either.

Conversely, say someone has 3 credit cards each with $1000 limits.  They have $0 balances on 2 of them and a $500 balance on the third.  This puts their aggregate utilization at 17% and their individual card utilization at 50%.  Both of these percentages result in a scoring penalty.  If on the card with a balance this person receives a CLI from $1000 to $2000, their utilization on that card would drop from 50% to 25%, eliminating the small penalty from individual card utilization.  This could result in a 5-7 point increase or so, depending on profile.  Their aggregate utilization however would not cross a threshold, only droping from 17% to 13%.  If they were to drop aggregate across the 8.9% threshold, perhaps another 20 points or so would be seen.