Rebucketing

[smallfry]

Well I wouldn't want to get dinged for an installment reporting too much utilization so I imagine I should immediately pay it down to 25% of the balance right? I wonder if by doing that I force the loan to be removed quicker or will I be able to make smaller monthly payments on the loan and carry it to full term like Navy Federal allows with its car loans.

[Anonymous]

Depends on how the loan is set up. They have loans where you can make interest only payments and a lump sum at the end of the loan for the balance. So a $500 loan could have payments of $5 per month and then $500 due on last payment. This would give you the ability to pay it down faster to reduce UTL. But if you don't need credit for the next so many months it should not really matter since in 6 months you will be below 50%. I am sure there are other ways to reduce the payment and still have the ability to make 12 payments...

[smallfry]

Extrapolated a bit carrying accounts out to early retirement when I will be looking for a smallish mortgage on a retirement home. In 4 years assuming one more car loan and no new cards I will have 25 total accounts average age 6 years oldest account 10 years and 4 months. Same basic credit mix. 7 revolving lines with 1 open car loan. Not optimum but not all that bad I think.

[Anonymous]

Yea, me and my well how do I hit 850 I sometimes forget that I miss the point of... It doesn't matter once over 760. You have done very well and probably another installment won't gain you more credit just improve a score that will not benefit you above 760. I sometimes think people are playing the game to get as close to 850 as possible. But at least I learned extra little tricks which are helping folks get a bit further. If I stopped at 760 I would never have been pushed to learn them. You're great right where you are. I agree.

[RobertEG]

From all I have read from FairIsaac posts, the major rebucketing (transfer to different scoring algorighms) occurs as a result of:  short vs long established credit history, absence or presence of major (60+ derogs), absence or presence of BK (a big bucket), absence or presence of a PR or CA.  More minor buckets that all seem to rail the most about, but appear much less significant, are shifts of %util.

If you were about to lend $10,000 to someone, how you want to evaluate them?  I think I would want to know which bucket they are in....

I think FICO does a pretty good job of discrimation.