@ncochran1989 wrote:
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.
+1 to Revelates post
and I will add, using the "all cards at zero except one with a small balance" is the way to optimize your score Within The Bounds of The Rest Of Your File. With the derogatories, those are what determine your possible range of scores. If you have already gotten to the All Cards at Zero Except One level, congratulations, you've found your upper bound in score for this month.
Keeping your file at All Cards at Zero Except One will see your score rise over time, but not due to the All Cards but One situation. It improves as the baddies age, or drop off, and you continue to build age of accounts.
If you now let the cards report their usage as natural utilization, you likely will see some score drop, but if utilization stays reasonably in check the score drop should be minor. Your effort to try to manage the cards to zero is reduced as well. If you decide an application is approaching, you can manage the cards back to All Cards but One and see some score improvement.
@jamie123 wrote:People on these forums, starting fresh with no baddies and no credit, have hit an 800 score in 3 years at the earliest. Those are exceptional situations where the people have made exactly all the right credit moves at exactly the right times. It would take most people that don't have any baddies on their reports about 4 to 5 years to hit an 800 score.
Should be faster than that FICO 8 no?
Saw a report that someone hit 800 with an AAOA of 2 years, which should be a lot shorter walk than 3 year if fully leveraging the knowledge.
After the initial "bang", my FICO score is slowww to do much of anything, probably all of the app'ing, lol...
@jamie123 wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@jamie123 wrote:People on these forums, starting fresh with no baddies and no credit, have hit an 800 score in 3 years at the earliest. Those are exceptional situations where the people have made exactly all the right credit moves at exactly the right times. It would take most people that don't have any baddies on their reports about 4 to 5 years to hit an 800 score.Should be faster than that FICO 8 no?
Saw a report that someone hit 800 with an AAOA of 2 years, which should be a lot shorter walk than 3 year if fully leveraging the knowledge.
The fastest that I've seen someone get a FICO 08 score on the forums was about 3 years I believe. I'm thinking a 2 year score would be more like 760-780 but maybe now if you did the installment loan thing you might be able to hit 800 in 2 years.
Yeah that's my thinking.
If I were going just for pure FICO maximization at the two year mark:
5 secured cards (or whatever I could qualify for, student, store, doesn't matter if there's no CFA tag)
1 share secured loan w/Alliant, reindeer games.
Then just sit on my hands 2 years, not miss a payment and that should hit the 2 year AAOA mark at 2 years (roughly, some delay when talking initial cards if secured) and I'd be willing to bet that'd be 800 on a FICO 8 with pretty revolving utilization at that date. Might even be earlier, we still have people hitting ~760 after 1 year on FICO 8, and the installment loan to that is another 20-30 points easy on that file, so...