@SouthJamaica wrote:
@jamie123 wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@manyquestions wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:I guess I can't afford to stop playing the reindeer games. I just paid off a share secured loan & my scores plummeted 25 and 29 points.
Was that your only open loan? So now you have no open loans of any kind?
Yes it was my only instalment loan.
To me the moral of the story is that the FICO algorithm is pretty lame, and easily manipulated: the difference between a $500 loan with a $78 balance, and a $500 loan with a zero balance was 25+ points. Or put another way, by NOT PAYING $78 I would have ADDED 25+ points to my score.
Absurd.
But the algorithms aren't easily manipulated. It's only after much trial and error on this board that we find these algorithm factors that can change your scores. Sure, it's easy when you find the MyFICO forums and find out the so called "rules" that you should manage your credit with but until then you are pretty much at the mercy of FICO.
It is like standing outside a locked door with a keypad access. It would take you forever or be impossible to open the door by yourself, but if somebody was standing next to you and gave you the PIN the door is easily opened.
I mean before you found this forum, who would have thought that you would receive the best scores with 1 card reporting a small balance and all the others $0. Most people would assume that all cards reporting $0 would be best. The difference for me in those two scenarios is 18 points which is HUGE! I lose 18 points across the board if I pay all my cards to $0.
Same goes for these wimpy $500 share secured loans. Outside of MyFICO nobody else even mentions them as a way to increase scores. As a matter of fact, it was only 18 months ago that this was even thought of as a point boosting strategy on MyFICO. It has only been the in last few months that it was discovered that it was best to have the loan paid down to less than 10% remaining balance for best results.
It might seem easy once somebody informs you how it works but to find these little gems takes time and effort by many members like yourself. Anytime someone else like yourself tries these strategies and posts results to the forum we solidify the strategy and are able to nail down the specifics as to what the so called "rules" should be to make it work.
We can then spread that information, and it may seem easy to others that don't realize how much work went into the discovery of said information because, like the locked door with the keypad, once you know the PIN it's easy.
All right. I stand corrected. It's "pretty lame and easily manipulated once you know how"
That is a pretty good definition of "statistics".
@Anonymous wrote:Also they have to tell you SOMETHING until you get to approximately 850
The notes on mine always vanish at 800 and above. Fico 8, anyway.
ETA: And they always come back when it drops back below 800, even if it's one stinking point below.
Well. they have to do something to keep you interested right?
I mean maybe just their way of pushing you back closer to the 850 wall. 
(in your case 800+)
Holy cow, my EX FICO8 bounced 28 points to a new all time high when my $500 share secured loan dropped from 15% ("too high") to 9%!!! And that's against a backdrop of a large increase in credit card utilization (from near zero up to 6%) which should have depressed the score a bit.
Will update this post when I hear from EQ & TU.
@Thomas_Thumb wrote:Thanks for the update.
That's a big jump for such a small reduction in balance to loan ratio. Wonder how Fico 09 reacts relative to Fico 08.
I think you will find that aggregate CC utilization in the something above zero to 6% range it treated the same with regards to scoring on Fico 08.
I'm curious on the FICO 9 data too, my split of scores between EQ / EX doesn't help in diagnosing that at all unfortunately when it comes to installment utilization.
Thanks SJ for the conclusive datapoint confirming the prior data as well, and I'm glad the reindeer games finally worked out for you!
@Thomas_Thumb wrote:Thanks for the update.
That's a big jump for such a small reduction in balance to loan ratio. Wonder how Fico 09 reacts relative to Fico 08.
I think you will find that aggregate CC utilization in the something above zero to 6% range it treated the same with regards to scoring on Fico 08.
I did seem to lose a few points across the board (9 on EQ, 6 on EX) when my overall credit card utilization shot up from $400 (0%) to $8900 (6%), but it could also have been a single-card issue, rather than an overall utilization issue, since 7800 of the 8900 was on one 10k card.
So you may well be right about that the 0 to 6% increase in overall utilization was a non-event.
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Thomas_Thumb wrote:Thanks for the update.
That's a big jump for such a small reduction in balance to loan ratio. Wonder how Fico 09 reacts relative to Fico 08.
I think you will find that aggregate CC utilization in the something above zero to 6% range it treated the same with regards to scoring on Fico 08.
I did seem to lose a few points across the board (9 on EQ, 6 on EX) when my overall credit card utilization shot up from $400 (0%) to $8900 (6%), but it could also have been a single-card issue, rather than an overall utilization issue, since 7800 of the 8900 was on one 10k card.
So you may well be right about that the 0 to 6% increase in overall utilization was a non-event.
That's pretty much identical to my maxxed out tradeline test that I did semi-recently. Guess I misinterpreted TT's post, but yeah that sounds like individual card.