An interesting question. Well most of the things about buckets are kept secret. I have found that when I was able to toggle tradelines on and off (as in adding and deleting from CR) I fell in to a different scoring formula to UTL and scoring. I could be wrong but I have hard proof on paper showing UTL acting differently in what seemed to be different buckets. In the better bucket the formula expected more from me making it harder to stay where I was. I was also punished faster where I had more leeway with my other bucket. This is what I believe was happening. I could reproduce it on and off back and forward to prove it was really happening in an isolated action.
Is age the only factor. Well in my case age was not the factor. So the answer I think is no. I guess number of accounts, baddies, new accounts, ect may have different buckets.
Here is what I believe I understand about credit buckets. New people to credit seem to do better faster. But really I think it is that people with credit longer (the age bucket) are expected to be further up the score card.
Now if you compare the actions of a long term skilled credit person to a newbie of credit and they both act the same way in handling there credit it says 1 of 2 things.
A. The newbie is doing something right.
B. The skilled person is acting like a newbie.
So the bucket in this case shows that the newbie is on track and expected to keep going up or the skilled person is not using their experience properly and should be higher up than they are. The experience give the aged skilled person an advantage over the newbie so not doing as well might look not as good for the aged skilled person and might be why they are scored harder. This is just one "possible" bucket I am guessing at.
As for my bucket change it was number of accounts. When I filled more of the accounts I needed the formula got more specific and gave me narrower windows to work with. This made it harder for me to advance my score higher. An example I can give relating to basketball and completely made up is a person with 3 tradelines would have a hoop 4 feet wide where a person with 15 tradelines would have a hoop 1 food wide. In my case it was UTL and scoring was my hoop/bucket. For example I had a higher score at the same exact UTL with fewer accounts than I did with more accounts. This gets confusing since my score was higher over all with more accounts. I found this by doing a test exactly the same way before and after my number of accounts change measuring the difference of change per action. Then I compared the change with each bucket and score change from start to finish was different for a single isolated action.
example.
With fewer accounts I started with a score of 720. I used xxx UTL and my score dropped to 710. I then ran the same with more accounts and my score started at 760 and with xxx UTL my score dropped to 740. There you can see the bucket change.
The bucket I had at 760 was harder on me for the same actions as I did when I had a 720 score.
The whole formula is one giant bucket grouping us by something so scoring with in a group could be called subbuckets. It's the subbuckets that people refer to as buckets.
You have the general idea how buckets work.
Is age the only factor. Well in my case age was not the factor. So the answer I think is no. I guess number of accounts, baddies, new accounts, ect may have different buckets.
Here is what I believe I understand about credit buckets. New people to credit seem to do better faster. But really I think it is that people with credit longer (the age bucket) are expected to be further up the score card.
Now if you compare the actions of a long term skilled credit person to a newbie of credit and they both act the same way in handling there credit it says 1 of 2 things.
A. The newbie is doing something right.
B. The skilled person is acting like a newbie.
So the bucket in this case shows that the newbie is on track and expected to keep going up or the skilled person is not using their experience properly and should be higher up than they are. The experience give the aged skilled person an advantage over the newbie so not doing as well might look not as good for the aged skilled person and might be why they are scored harder. This is just one "possible" bucket I am guessing at.
As for my bucket change it was number of accounts. When I filled more of the accounts I needed the formula got more specific and gave me narrower windows to work with. This made it harder for me to advance my score higher. An example I can give relating to basketball and completely made up is a person with 3 tradelines would have a hoop 4 feet wide where a person with 15 tradelines would have a hoop 1 food wide. In my case it was UTL and scoring was my hoop/bucket. For example I had a higher score at the same exact UTL with fewer accounts than I did with more accounts. This gets confusing since my score was higher over all with more accounts. I found this by doing a test exactly the same way before and after my number of accounts change measuring the difference of change per action. Then I compared the change with each bucket and score change from start to finish was different for a single isolated action.
example.
With fewer accounts I started with a score of 720. I used xxx UTL and my score dropped to 710. I then ran the same with more accounts and my score started at 760 and with xxx UTL my score dropped to 740. There you can see the bucket change.
The bucket I had at 760 was harder on me for the same actions as I did when I had a 720 score.The whole formula is one giant bucket grouping us by something so scoring with in a group could be called subbuckets. It's the subbuckets that people refer to as buckets.
You have the general idea how buckets work.
@Anonymous wrote:
An interesting question. Well most of the things about buckets are kept secret. I have found that when I was able to toggle tradelines on and off (as in adding and deleting from CR) I fell in to a different scoring formula to UTL and scoring. I could be wrong but I have hard proof on paper showing UTL acting differently in what seemed to be different buckets. In the better bucket the formula expected more from me making it harder to stay where I was. I was also punished faster where I had more leeway with my other bucket. This is what I believe was happening. I could reproduce it on and off back and forward to prove it was really happening in an isolated action.
Is age the only factor. Well in my case age was not the factor. So the answer I think is no. I guess number of accounts, baddies, new accounts, ect may have different buckets.
Here is what I believe I understand about credit buckets. New people to credit seem to do better faster. But really I think it is that people with credit longer (the age bucket) are expected to be further up the score card.
Now if you compare the actions of a long term skilled credit person to a newbie of credit and they both act the same way in handling there credit it says 1 of 2 things.
A. The newbie is doing something right.
B. The skilled person is acting like a newbie.
So the bucket in this case shows that the newbie is on track and expected to keep going up or the skilled person is not using their experience properly and should be higher up than they are. The experience give the aged skilled person an advantage over the newbie so not doing as well might look not as good for the aged skilled person and might be why they are scored harder. This is just one "possible" bucket I am guessing at.
As for my bucket change it was number of accounts. When I filled more of the accounts I needed the formula got more specific and gave me narrower windows to work with. This made it harder for me to advance my score higher. An example I can give relating to basketball and completely made up is a person with 3 tradelines would have a hoop 4 feet wide where a person with 15 tradelines would have a hoop 1 food wide. In my case it was UTL and scoring was my hoop/bucket. For example I had a higher score at the same exact UTL with fewer accounts than I did with more accounts. This gets confusing since my score was higher over all with more accounts. I found this by doing a test exactly the same way before and after my number of accounts change measuring the difference of change per action. Then I compared the change with each bucket and score change from start to finish was different for a single isolated action.
example.
With fewer accounts I started with a score of 720. I used xxx UTL and my score dropped to 710. I then ran the same with more accounts and my score started at 760 and with xxx UTL my score dropped to 740. There you can see the bucket change.
The whole formula is one giant bucket grouping us by something so scoring with in a group could be called subbuckets. It's the subbuckets that people refer to as buckets.
You have the general idea how buckets work.
Excellent post!
It does raise more questions though in terms of when and if age plays as a less significant of a factor as you indicate with your own experience. I started last Oct. with actually building my credit file. I have no need for a mortgage in the foreseeable future, so without an active mortgage reporting, the longest I can expect any of my installment accounts to report is the maximum of 10 years. So a person without a mortgage has to rely on revolving CC accounts it seems as the sole mechanism of maintaining their credit score over the long haul unless they want to rely on personal loans or buying a new car every few years.
Your own experience of losing 20 points from 760 with a UTL change seems quite significant. Especially considering the interest rates associated with that score range for say an automobile or mortgage loan. It just doesnt make sense that someone with a great credit history would be somehow penalized for using that which they have earned the right to use.
@haulingthescoreup wrote:
@ChrisGA43 wrote:
....Your own experience of losing 20 points from 760 with a UTL change seems quite significant. Especially considering the interest rates associated with that score range for say an automobile or mortgage loan. It just doesnt make sense that someone with a great credit history would be somehow penalized for using that which they have earned the right to use.
My DH just lost 20 points on TU alone, dropping from 804 to 784 for the shocking crime of having 2 out of 3 cards report, at 1% util. This wasn't a rebucketing, but just an example of the fact that the higher your scores, the fiercer the penalty....
Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 07-10-2008 03:21 AM
Hmm... you indicate that your DH's situation was not a rebucket, yet ilovepizza seems to think that the same score drop based on UTL was a re-bucket. So either it IS a function of account age, or it's not...even more confusing...lol.
So far I have considered myself to have done -everything- right where my own credit file is concerned, and even though it is limited only by time(age) at this point, I do realize that my FICO's will also improve as the age of my accounts increase.. My goal, and I think that this might be the important part that I may be overlooking, is to get somewhere between 3-5 years of spotless account history estabslished on my CR's using a mix of installment loans and no more than 2-3 revolving CC accounts. At the 5 year mark all of my installment accounts will have zero balances, so sans mortgage or a new auto loan I'll be left with only my revolving accounts by which to maintain my credit files. The thing is; those prime revolving accounts havent been obtained as of yet, so it appears I'm a slave to the system in terms of which cards I get approved for, and the corresponding CL's that will come with each. This is the only aspect of my journey that I have simply no control over, and I accept that, but I would like to think that I would be able to move out of subprime land a little faster than has been indicated elsewhere on these forums. So these buckets seem very important in that regard.
You don't need a mortgage. When you get towards the mid 700's the buckets may then make things more difficult and so on as your score grows. As in the other case where 2 out of 3 cards reported there was a drop in score I take a similar drop in score for the same kind of action. For you right now I'd not worry about buckets as coming from a lower score the buckets will move you faster up the scoring line as your improve working in your favor.
When you get towards the mid 700's the buckets may then make things more difficult and so on as your score grows. As in the other case where 2 out of 3 cards reported there was a drop in score I take a similar drop in score for the same kind of action. For you right now I'd not worry about buckets as coming from a lower score the buckets will move you faster up the scoring line as your improve working in your favor.