Hey guys,
i wanted to start a thread for some of the know thresholds for ficos rating system (poor, fair, good, very good, exceptional)
as you know each section gets a rating, and while these ratings may seem silly, these ratings greatly impact your score. Whether the affect is directly because of the rating or indirectly I don't know, but I know it has an impact. To give you an idea I have also added my score changes associated with the ratings changes, keep in mind these score changes are specific to my profile.
here are some of the thresholds I have learned recently, feel free to add your own experiences
payment history-
was at good rating- 1 late payment and 50% of accounts paid as agreed
was improved to very good rating when my accounts paid as agreed went from 50% to 75%. Resulted in about 15/20 point increase across the board.
amount of new credit:
Was at fair rating- 2 new accounts in the past year, with newest account under 3 months of age
Improved to good rating once newest account hit 3 months, resulting in increase of about 10 points across all 3 cra's
amount of debt:
Was at very good rating- 4% aggregate utilization ratio, 1/1 accounts with balances
improved to exceptional rating once I added 2 additional accounts and made sure I did AZEO, making totals 1/3 accounts with balances and 1% aggregate utilization ratio. Resulted in about 15/20 point gain
credit age:
good rating- age of oldest account over 7 years, average age of accounts over 4 years
decreased to fair rating once I dropped to 2 years 7 months average age of accounts. So 3 or 4 years average age seems to be the thresholds to go from fair to good. Fair to good change resulted in 10 point gain for me.
credit mix
was at good rating with 1 open credit card and 1 closed auto loan, improved to very good after adding 2 additional credit cards.
Like trying to put 10-scale numbers on terms, what is "nice", "hot" , "interesting".
7, 9, 8 or 6, 10, 7. 
Yes agreed. The score increases were because of the data that caused the rating to change not because of the rating change itself. Example- the fact that my youngest account hit 3 months was the reason for the score change, but this also happened to be a threshold to change your "amount of new credit" from fair to good. Or when my newest accounts got enough age behind them, they became "accounts paid as agreed", improving my payment history from good to very good.
So, now people know that when their newest account hits 3 months, they can expect a score increase, and they now know that it's because their amount of new credit improved. They no longer have to guess as to why the score improvement occurred.
like I said, the ratings themselves maybe not be "directly affecting the score" but they are certainly indirectly affecting the scores and there is absolutely a correlation between your rating and your score.
When my ratings went up so did my score, again, not directly because of the ratings, but that was not the point of this, the point was to try to pinpoint known thresholds in which your ratings change, to try to give people an idea as to when their score may increase and by how much.
because again, there is a correlation. That's all I was trying to point out.
