@Anonymous wrote:
I have a Slumberland Furniture card through Wells Fargo that has the term "inactive" in the remarks section of that account on my credit report. I am trying to get 20 points on my FICO score to qualify for a mortgage. Will charging something to that card raise my score?
Thats an intresting question! I'm not sure but want to know myself. (hopefully a myFICO expert can chime in)
A mod hopefully will move this to the Understanding FICO score board; however, theoretically it could raise your score but I don't have a confirmation of that nor an estimate of how much. Like LS I'd be very interested in hearing what the result; however, I sort of assume there's a penalty in how it's factored into the score.
Edit: assuming that it's a postitive tradeline otherwise.
@Anonymous wrote:
Here is some more information: I pulled out my trusty calculator and determined that the inactive account is not be factored into my revolving debt to credit ratio (at least on my experian CR). My revolving util is 72%. When I factor in the inactive account, it drops to 64%. I don't know if a 9% drop would give me the points I need, but this could be something to look out for to get a couple extra points, perhaps.
Interesting, mind doing the math on your AAoA and seeing if it's counted there as well? I think illecs has a quick and dirty spreadsheet posted somewhere on this board which can help, but basically it's:
Take every tradeline, open or closed (not collections / public records), take the opening date, and calculate the number of months between the opening month and today's month. Add all those together, divide by total number of tradelines, and that's AAoA. I would *assume* that it's being counted correctly there.
Also is there a date anywhere on when it went inactive? Might be a status last reported date or something similar?
Anyway the other poster is right, if you're at 72% utilization, that's seriously dragging down your FICO score. If you have any swing in your home purchase time, just pay it ASAP.