Snowball Negatively Affecting My Score?

[Anonymous]

Thanks! I really want to get my TU score above 700 so I'm going to do this.

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I was using CK but someone here recommended Credit Check Total and I'm really glad I signed up because my score is better than what CK was telling me. But I do have my TU score at 691 and I'm trying to get it above 700.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thank you! I was using CK but someone here recommended Credit Check Total and I'm really glad I signed up because my score is better than what CK was telling me. But I do have my TU score at 691 and I'm trying to get it above 700.

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Karma is a great tool for getting frequent copies of your TU and EQ report.

Do take a look at the question asked by BBS.  It's important to know if you have any derogs of any kind in the last 7 years.  The "100%" metric given by the summary page of CK is often very misleading.  (The reports themselves at CK are fine -- it's the summary page that can mislead people.)

Do you know whether your reports are completely derog-free?

[Anonymous]

Yes, when I checked my credit report through Credit Check Total, it was 100% derogatory free.

[Anonymous]

If your score is under 700 and you have no derogatories, here's a short list of things you can do to get it higher:

1. Don't report balances on more than 1 credit card if possible.  If you report balances on many cards, that dings your FICO8 score.
2. Get utilization in check: less than 9% of total utilization, and no cards with more than 40% utilization.
3. Let inquiries age off -- after 12 months of age, an inquiry has no effect on FICO8.
4. Let your accounts age together -- when your AAoA is over 24 months, your score will go up every year after (with no new accounts)
5. Get your installment balances due under 90% -- if you have NO installment loans reporting a balance, do the SSL Technique to get a perfect installment loan reporting -- http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Adding-an-installment-loan-the-Share-Secu...
6. Make sure you have at least 3 open credit cards reporting

[Anonymous]

Thank you for this advice! I hit the luv button where it was available on my store accounts and I got over 4k increase with all of them combined. Coming from a family who didn't raise me to be financially smart, I really appreciate message boards like this and the strangers who are willing to give such great advice.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thank you! I was using CK but someone here recommended Credit Check Total and I'm really glad I signed up because my score is better than what CK was telling me. But I do have my TU score at 691 and I'm trying to get it above 700.

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Just know that your CCT scores are genuine FICO scores, not scores from the VS 3.0 model that CK gives you.  You should feel good about the quality of the scores you received from CCT.

[jamie123]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thank you for this advice! I hit the luv button where it was available on my store accounts and I got over 4k increase with all of them combined. Coming from a family who didn't raise me to be financially smart, I really appreciate message boards like this and the strangers who are willing to give such great advice.

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That's awesome! That will bring your UTI down a bit! Now, just don't use the extra CLI for anything!

You should see a score bump once the CLIs report but keep paying your balances down.

If you learn one thing here at MyFICO is that you don't want to carry credit card balances month to month. The interest is just a killer and once you gain financial freedom it will feel wonderful! (And your scores will look great too!)

[Anonymous]

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@jamie123 wrote:

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You should see a score bump once the CLIs report but keep paying your balances down.

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This is not necessarily true and it's important that the OP not receive false hope of his scores going up when his CLIs report.  I didn't use a calculator or anything, but just a rough estimate from looking at the OP's balances/limits it looks like he's sitting somewhere around $12k in debt against $36k in balances.  His aggregate utilization is in the 29%-49% range and with adding $4k to his overall limits would still be in the 29%-49% range, meaning there would be zero score increase from adding the greater limits.  When he does cross the threshold to 28.99% aggregate utilization, which certainly could happen faster once the CLIs are reported, that's the point he'd see a score increase. 

[Anonymous]

Yup...

• $12,000/$36,000 = 33.3% aggregate utilization
• $12,000/$40,000 = 30.0% aggregate utilization
• To get to 28.9% aggregate utilization, OP will need to pay down to $11,560 at statement cut -- but remember that interest will accrue and post with new statement balances

So best bet is to pay down to $11,560 minus whatever interest will accrue.  And maybe a bit more just in case.