@atarvuzdar wrote:I've got several relatively high limit CCs in my wallet, including a BofA Cash Rewards with a $69,000 limit.
I've been carrying balances on BofA, Discover and my JetBlue Plus (0% APR targeted offer, 0% APR targeted offer, 60K bonus point targeted holiday offer, respectively). I recently paid off the balances on my Discover and JetBlue Plus, leaving me at AZEO with BofA the only card carrying a balance.
However, I pulled my quarterly 3-bureau credit report from myFico yesterday and saw something interesting. Several of the score versions seem to not consider my BofA as a credit card, particularly the older versions. So, it seems, for those score versions I am not at AZEO but, in fact, they are looking at my profile as though I have $0 CC debt and I'm being penalized for it (though I'm not all that concerned). I am guessing this is due to the credit limit on BofA.
Listing below my scores and factors listed on each which either seem to show the score does or does not consider my BofA as a credit card (my hypothesis for each is in parentheses after the noted factor):
EQ FICO 8 (827): "You've shown recent use of credit cards and/or bank-issued open-ended accounts." (BofA is a credit card)
TU FICO 8 (827): "You've shown recent use of credit cards and/or bank-issued open-ended accounts." (BofA is a credit card)
EX FICO 8 (815): "You've shown recent use of credit cards and/or bank-issued open-ended accounts." (BofA is a credit card)
EQ Mortgage 5 (809): No positive or negative factors shown
TU Mortgage 4 (775): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
EX Mortgage 2 (794): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
EQ Auto 5 (827): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
TU Auto 4 (791): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
EX Auto 2 (811): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
EQ Auto 8 (845): "You have too many credit accounts with balances." (Undetermined? I also have a mortgage, HELOC & 1 student loan)
TU Auto 8 (851): No positive or negative factors shown
EX Auto 8 (836): "You've made heavy use of your available revolving credit." (BofA is a credit card)
EQ Auto 9 (842): "You've made heavy use of your available revolving credit." (BofA is a credit card)
TU Auto 9 (834): "You've made heavy use of your available revolving credit." (BofA is a credit card)
EX Auto 9 (829): No reference to revolving as any factor, good or bad
EQ Bankcard 8 (842): "You have too many credit accounts with balances." (Undetermined? I also have a mortgage, HELOC & 1 student loan)
TU Bankcard 8 (855): No positive or negative factors shown
EX Bankcard 8 (847): "You've made heavy use of your available revolving credit." (BofA is a credit card)
EQ Bankcard 5 (825): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
TU Bankcard 4 (806): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
EX Bankcard 2 (822): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
EX FICO Score 3 (787): "There are no recent balances on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts." (BofA is not a credit card)
EQ Bankcard 9 (828): "You've made heavy use of your available revolving credit." (BofA is a credit card)
TU Bankcard 9 (823): "The amount owed on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts is too high." (BofA is a credit card)
EX Bankcard 9 (824): "The amount owed on your revolving and/or open-ended accounts is too high." (BofA is a credit card)
EQ FICO 9 (821): No positive or negative factors shown
TU FICO 9 (816): No positive or negative factors shown
EX FICO 9 (814): No positive or negative factors shown
Additional data points: TU Mortgage 4, TU Auto 4 and EX FICO 3 scores are all lower than they were when I pulled my last quarterly report on 1/1/2021. At the time, I was carrying balances on all 3 of the aforementioned cards but with much larger balances.
BofA balance is now ~$13,000 (18.84% Util). 0% APR thru 9/2021. I'll have this paid off well before then.
I found this very interesting. Aside from welcoming any comments or feedback as to whether I'm offbase or not, I also wanted to share these data points for those of you who follow the details, intricacies & idiosyncracies of FICO scoring.
You're not offbase at all. You've tripped across something most of us never get to experience.... the discrepancy between the older scoring models and the newer ones at where they draw the line on very high credit limits which warrant exclusion from utilization.
If I recall correctly, most of the speculation on this is that the older models discount limits over 30k, while with the newer models you need to get much higher, and your 69k limit on BoA is not high enough to do that.
@SouthJamaica wrote:You're not offbase at all. You've tripped across something most of us never get to experience.... the discrepancy between the older scoring models and the newer ones at where they draw the line on very high credit limits which warrant exclusion from utilization.
If I recall correctly, most of the speculation on this is that the older models discount limits over 30k, while with the newer limits you need to get much higher, and your 69k limit on BoA is not high enough to do that.
Just wanted to clarify the background on this: The introduction of HELOC's caused some distortion in the scoring of revovling tradelines inasmuch as the respective tradelines aren't distinguished from revolving credit cards, but obviously credit patterns on HELOC's differ considerably.
The only practical remedy was to characterize higher limit revolving accounts separately from lower limit ones. Over time, typical credit card tradelines have been escalating upwards. However, the definitions under a given FICO model are fixed in place. So, yeah, the dividing line was moved upward with the introduction of FICO 8, etc.
I've intentionally resisted the impulse to increase my individual credit limits above 30k as a precaution to optimize my revolving credit card utilization numbers.
