How long to raise score?

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

Over the last few months I've raised my scores quite a bit. I've disputed an old derogatory off my reports, paid off all credit cards, paid down my car loan which is almost paid off now. I am now just using credit and letting one card report a small balance each month. I have no other changes that I can make to raise my score. How long does it take to to raise your scores if you just let one card report a low utilization and pay on time every month? I don't have a bankruptcy or anything like that. I do have an old paid medical bill falling off in 6 Mos or so and two paid small med bills from 2012.

[AutoBot]

Do you have at least 3 cards current and reporting? I think that helps with your score.

[Anonymous]

I have 4 cards. Adding more actually helped me out, I think. I use them all, but I pay in full and choose only one to report. I change it up as to which one.

[AutoBot]

What are your current FICO scores?

[Anonymous]

Ex is 662, but I think still may have a small bump coming up. Eq and tu are 680.

[Anonymous]

Even though 2 of the 3 medical collections are paid they're still hurting your score because of the fact that they exist, paid or unpaid. If I were you I'd try GWing the CAs for removal on the 2 paid or google the HIPAA process (we can't discuss it on here) to address all 3 of the medical collections. From what I told the removal of the collections should move you to a different scoring algorithm and make it easier to increase your scores. Do you have any other derogs like lates or COs? Also, if your car loan is your only installment loan you will probably take a little hit once it's paid off because you won't have a good "credit mix" if it's your only installment loan.

[Anonymous]

I do not have any late payments. No derogatory marks. I also have a small student loan, so when the car is paid, I still have one installment loan. One med debt is falling off soon. I'm not comfortable disputing the other two. I know fico 9 judges med debt a little different, and some lenders who aren't using fico 9 still understand it's a med collection. Yes, my score would improve, but those two collections aren't going anywhere for a few yrs. That's the worst I have on my report. A couple paid med collections from 4+ years ago for around $500 each. Maybe little more. With nothing else changing, how long of having on time credit card payments does it take to see a change in score? I know I'm far from the 800 club, but getting to the 700s would sure feel good.

[Anonymous]

Honestly idk how long it would take but maybe a wiser member could chime in. But I definitely think you need to get those medical collections removed to see a significant increase because the problem is most lenders don't use fico9 yet so those collections are hurting your score with whatever scoring model they're currently using. Check your pm though.

[Anonymous]

I'm looking for a more generic answer. Not really based on my profile on how scores increase with using and paying credit cards monthly.

[Revelate]

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@ncochran1989 wrote:
I'm looking for a more generic answer. Not really based on my profile on how scores increase with using and paying credit cards monthly.

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Payment history is calculated more on the absence of derogatories or deliquencies, rather than the pretty OK's.

Your profile is going to be sorted into a dirty bucket for as long as those medical collections are on there, and as such it very much depends in your individual profile on how long it takes to increase.

My profile isn't 100% analogous since I have a tax lien, although from a bucketing perspective they appear to be darned near identical and that dominates the scorecard, but it's a long grind.  Revolving utilization is instant in time, so your reported balances don't mean much until you make an application: the whole 1 card thing reporting a minimal balance is for optimization pre-lender-pull, won't help your score increase any faster, just maximizes it at a point in time.

Anyway you can see my starting scores for EX/EQ (TU is squirrley because I did something dumb last year) and where they currently are with a dirty file and nothing I could do to sort it faster.  The only part of my file which isn't optmized currently is my installment utilization, because I obtained a mortgage and lost ~24 points off my FICO 8's as a result.  Been working on this for 4.5 years, it's a long ass road if you can't get negatives deleted.