New Credit Card Drop

[Anonymous]

I would think that for whatever reason this late payment isn't being seen by the FICO algorithm.  OP, what are the FICO negative reason statements you are provided with for your file?

[Anonymous]

Only communication with creditor that had 30 day late was this week in which I sent a GW letter acknowledging that it was my error, explaining why it happenned and corrective action taken by me (basically an automated pay in future). Only other prior communication was me calling the 800 number and all they did was refund the late fee and the representative was unaware of what to do about the credit report and said there was nothing he could do. I let it pass and did not file a dispute.

The negative from the CCT is attached. I am loath to give details that can identify me in case it is a real error. Dont want to see my score go down . I think what happenned is that the prior Late cushioned this late and there were a bunch of scenarios that happenned that led to my score being what it is.

Someone asked for a timeline. Prior to recently I used to only periodically monitor using some free credit card sites like Barclays, Discover, Citi etc and so details are hazy but this is a rough timeline.

July 2016 - First late payment. Dropped score to appx 760. Dont know what it was prior but guessing it was 830+

July 2016 to March 2018 - Score recovers to 800 and then drops to 760 on second late in March 2018

June - July 2018 - I go on vacation taking 2 cards with me and make a bunch of mistakes. First I let one card get to 30% utilization. I then let a second card get to 30% utilization and then the first card gets to 50% utilization. Now I have one card at 50% and the other at 30%. My overall utilization is still less than 7%. I also let a retailer cancel a little used store card beacuse of no usage on it.

August 2018 - I find my score at less than 740 and panic. For the first time I am aware of the per card utilization and take steps to correct things. I pay off both cards in early Aug but only the 30% card reports in Aug and now I have only one card at 50% utilization. One inquiry drops off my record as well. My score is now at 770. In the last week of Aug, the second card reports  and I have low utilizations in 2 cards and 0 balances everywhere. I also get a GW credit on the first late and now my report shows only one late.

Sep 2018 - My score is 801 at one B. I am not going to post the other B scores (scared they will identify and lower my scores but they are all marginally over 800. 

This is what I remember and since I am recalling from memory,  details may be a bit off.

There were many events going on and I think something cushioned my fall. 

  Image from CCT

[Anonymous]

And here is the score from CCT...

[Anonymous]

When I'm referring to negative reason statements, they're not found under the "overview" tab on CCT where you took that image from.  What you want to do is click the "score" tab and then to the right you'll see a list of factors hurting your score.  For scores > 800, CCT may omit the negative reason statements, but I'm not 100% sure at what point that happens.  Other sources are known to still provide you with negative reason statements even when your score is 850.  My Lowe's credit card does for example, as does my mortgage provider.

[Anonymous]

It has the 1 missed payment under the Score -> What's Hurting section. There are a bunch of factors on the corresponding Whats Helping section.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Anonymous 

wrote:

Only communication with creditor that had 30 day late was this week in which I sent a GW letter acknowledging that it was my error, explaining why it happenned and corrective action taken by me (basically an automated pay in future). Only other prior communication was me calling the 800 number and all they did was refund the late fee and the representative was unaware of what to do about the credit report and said there was nothing he could do. I let it pass and did not file a dispute.

August 2018 - I find my score at less than 740 and panic. For the first time I am aware of the per card utilization and take steps to correct things. I pay off both cards in early Aug but only the 30% card reports in Aug and now I have only one card at 50% utilization. One inquiry drops off my record as well. My score is now at 770.

In the last week of Aug, the second card reports  and I have low utilizations in 2 cards and 0 balances everywhere. I also get a GW credit on the first late and now my report shows only one late.

Sep 2018 - My score is 801 at one B. I am not going to post the other B scores (scared they will identify and lower my scores but they are all marginally over 800. 

There were many events going on and I think something cushioned my fall. 

  Image from CCT

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Thanks for the information.

If you get the last late removed and avoid applying for or getting a new card, your profile potentially could score 840 to 850. - You have an open refi mortgage on file with over 2.5 years payment history but, a high loan B/L ratio might be holding down your score a bit (say 10 points). What is the balance to loan ratio (B/L) on your mortgage? 

As mentioned before, try getting the late removed before applying for a new card or wait until the late ages past 12 months. If you get the late removed and your score spikes to 840 - 850 from the 800 - 810 range, that futher validates the late is currently influencing your score.

Side note: The card at 50% utilization likely is impacting your score negatively by 5 to 10 points.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I was left a message by someone in the Executive office yesterday about the Goodwill credit for the last late. I will call back and hopefully will be able to get that removed. Also the card with the 50 percent utilization has been paid off and my new 800+ score reflects that payoff.

Regarding your questions, I have 2 active mortgage loans. One of them dates back to May 2014 and I have a 90K balance on a 15 year refinanced 145K loan. The other one dates back to Nov 2016 and I have a 280K balance on a 30 year refinanced 315K loan. 

Regarding the additional card that I wanted to apply for, I have decided to have my wife apply for it in her name alone. That serves the purpose I wanted it for. A question for the board is what happens to my score if she adds me as an authorized user either during the application or later?  - it is a Citi card and we do have a different Citi card and she is pre-approved for the card we want.

Another question is this - I am considering a new mortgage loan for a new property in a few months. One of the two mortgage accounts is a rental and the other will convert to a rental as well. The new mortgage loan I am considering would be something like 450K loan on a 600K home. My mortgage broker tells me that he will be able to pull it off based on income, etc. What does this do to my credit score? I assume there will be a inquiry on my account. I do have 2 current inquiries but the one done in Oct 2016 (for the earlier mortgage refinance) is going to drop off next month.

Thanks. 

[Anonymous]

If you already have 2 mortgages at fairly high utilization and add a third, I wouldn't expect a significant scoring impact.  Sure you'll see a few points go from the inquiries, but in terms of the amounts owed slice of the FICO pie and percentages the impact would be little to nothing IMO.

[Anonymous]

Thats an side effect of the regular mortgage refinancing that I used to do. I refinanced several times when rates were falling. I did get better rates but each time there was an inquiry.

What I did not was that each time I refinanced, the new mortgage balance was lower than the old since I would refinance only the existing balance and my new utilization would start out at 100%.

[Anonymous]

Yup, I didn't really understand that either when I refinanced.  Of course, that was before I got into understanding credit at all and many years before I found this forum.  My original thought would have been that the new loan would have showed the old original balance pre-refi, meaning that utilization would stay the same.  Looking at it now from a more informed lens, it's pretty clear to me that a new loan is going to have a different original balance than an old one, so the fact that you start back at 100% utilization on it makes sense to me.