@FicoMike0 wrote:Pointed out, she is being penalized for the youngest account less than 12 months.
She would be a good candidate for a ssl. That would get her striking range to 800.
But wouldn't that penalty be a consistent one? Her score is jumping ±32 points within days. Up, down, up, down. I would think a new account penalty would be assessed and stay assessed until the account aged a year.
@Varsity_Lu wrote:My wife's score has been all over the place and I can't figure out how to stabilize it. There have been a few massive swings that have happened in the last few months. For example, in February, she lost 31 points, but a few weeks later got them all back, but in two 15 point chunks.
In August, September, and October, she lost 32 points two times only to get them back a few days later.
I am 99.9% certain that it has to do with reported balances, but I can't seem to find the right combo of accounts to report. She has 4 cards in her name and is an authorized user on my AmEx BCE. I have 5 cards and am an authorized user on both of her Capital One cards. I am working off of the following framework:
- You are penalized if all your accounts report zero.
- You are penalized if more than 50% of your personal accounts (not including AU) report a balance.
- You are penalized if all of the accounts you are an AU on report zero .
This morning she dropped 20 points and it happened when I was confident we had the correct reporting combo. I realize it's not AZEO, but I thought we checked the right boxes to avoid penalties. Here are her current reported acount numbers:
The AmEx account with $1,414 is mine, she is an AU on it. We have chosen to let more than one account report a balance each month making sure that each individual account utilization and the overall utilization is low. We are well under 8% utilization for everything, so I think the number of accounts reporting has to be the problem.
I guess my question is, based on the accounts shown above, shouldn't she be avoiding all the reporting penalties? Only 2 of her 4 are reporting a balance, her AU is not zero, and her utilization is low for everything.
I think the next step would be to let her AmEx (The $142 one) report zero and leave my AmEx and her Savor continue to report. It's not a big deal to do that, but I guess I just want to understand the scoring better becasue I thought that what we did would maximize her score. I guess not. Any insight would be appreciated.
You're misinterpreting the data.
1. Where are you getting her scores from?
2. It's virtually impossible for you to be monitoring her reported balances on a daily basis.
As to your assumptions:
Yes it is true that you are penalized in FICO for all cards reporting zero balance. The penalty can be significant, typically 20 points or so.
While it is true that you might be penalized in FICO for having too many cards reporting balances, the penalty -- if it is imposed which it often is not -- is very slight, like just a point or two.
Yes it is true that you are penalized in FICO for all cards on which you are an AU reporting zero balance. The penalty is in the same ballpark as the regular all zero penalty.
The scoring fluctuation you describe is not being caused by accounts reporting balances.
@SouthJamaica wrote:The scoring fluctuation you describe is not being caused by accounts reporting balances.
Then what is it? Her utilization is low. She hasn't had a new account or inq for almost 9 months. What else could be causing the 32 point swings?
@SouthJamaica wrote:You're misinterpreting the data.
1. Where are you getting her scores from?
2. It's virtually impossible for you to be monitoring her reported balances on a daily basis.
I never said I was monitoring her account balances daily. Those only update monthly and since all of our accounts post on the same day of the month, the reported balances are pretty much the same throughout the month. Her scores are changing every few days, though. I get her scores directly from Equifax, myFICO, and AmEx. The screenshots with the dates are from her score changes via AmEx.
@Varsity_Lu wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:You're misinterpreting the data.
1. Where are you getting her scores from?
2. It's virtually impossible for you to be monitoring her reported balances on a daily basis.
I never said I was monitoring her account balances daily. Those only update monthly and since all of our accounts post on the same day of the month, the reported balances are pretty much the same throughout the month. Her scores are changing every few days, though. I get her scores directly from Equifax, myFICO, and AmEx. The screenshots with the dates are from her score changes via AmEx.
I have scheduled many of my accounts to have the statements cut on the same date. However, that doesn't mean that they all show up at the credit bureaus at the same time. There is some variability as to when the updates actually appear on each bureau. It is possible that your actual bureau updates are coming several days apart which could result in having more or fewer accounts with balances at a specific moment than you are expecting.
@NoHardLimits wrote:
@Varsity_Lu wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:You're misinterpreting the data.
1. Where are you getting her scores from?
2. It's virtually impossible for you to be monitoring her reported balances on a daily basis.
I never said I was monitoring her account balances daily. Those only update monthly and since all of our accounts post on the same day of the month, the reported balances are pretty much the same throughout the month. Her scores are changing every few days, though. I get her scores directly from Equifax, myFICO, and AmEx. The screenshots with the dates are from her score changes via AmEx.
I have scheduled many of my accounts to have the statements cut on the same date. However, that doesn't mean that they all show up at the credit bureaus at the same time. There is some variability as to when the updates actually appear on each bureau. It is possible that your actual bureau updates are coming several days apart which could result in having more or fewer accounts with balances at a specific moment than you are expecting.
Correct. I never assumed that all the accounts will report their balance on the same day. This is why I believe the reported balances is what is causing the swings. Two accounts post one day, the score drops. A few days go by and another account reports, her scores go back up. If it's not this, I am at a loss to understand what it is.
@Varsity_Lu wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:The scoring fluctuation you describe is not being caused by accounts reporting balances.
Then what is it? Her utilization is low. She hasn't had a new account or inq for almost 9 months. What else could be causing the 32 point swings?
Why don't you go back through her reporting history and try to correlate the score changes with changes in reported balances?
This should be a fairly easy task. Even Experian's free service allows me to look at reports/scores going back several years. Many of these reports have an associated Fico 8 score, making it very easy to see the score that is assigned to each report.
For example, here's a screenshot:
@Varsity_Lu wrote:
@NoHardLimits wrote:
@Varsity_Lu wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:You're misinterpreting the data.
1. Where are you getting her scores from?
2. It's virtually impossible for you to be monitoring her reported balances on a daily basis.
I never said I was monitoring her account balances daily. Those only update monthly and since all of our accounts post on the same day of the month, the reported balances are pretty much the same throughout the month. Her scores are changing every few days, though. I get her scores directly from Equifax, myFICO, and AmEx. The screenshots with the dates are from her score changes via AmEx.
I have scheduled many of my accounts to have the statements cut on the same date. However, that doesn't mean that they all show up at the credit bureaus at the same time. There is some variability as to when the updates actually appear on each bureau. It is possible that your actual bureau updates are coming several days apart which could result in having more or fewer accounts with balances at a specific moment than you are expecting.
Correct. I never assumed that all the accounts will report their balance on the same day. This is why I believe the reported balances is what is causing the swings. Two accounts post one day, the score drops. A few days go by and another account reports, her scores go back up. If it's not this, I am at a loss to understand what it is.
I tend to agree with your belief that the large point swings have to do with reported balances. Even with my old/thick profile, my score can swing by 30 points on FICO8 if I accidentally have all accounts report zero (22 points for primary cardholder accounts and 8 points for AU accounts). But as long as the reported balances don't cross some high utilization threshold, I don't envision such a large point swing for non-zero balance situations. Even having more than 50% of accounts reporting small balances shouldn't move the needle that much.
I now designate one of my primary cardholder accounts to always report a balance. I also make sure that my one AU account always reports a balance. That way I have been able to avoid the all zero (no revolving balances) penalty.
@NoHardLimits wrote:I tend to agree with your belief that the large point swings have to do with reported balances. Even with my old/thick profile, my score can swing by 30 points on FICO8 if I accidentally have all accounts report zero (22 points for primary cardholder accounts and 8 points for AU accounts). But as long as the reported balances don't cross some high utilization threshold, I don't envision such a large point swing for non-zero balance situations. Even having more than 50% of accounts reporting small balances shouldn't move the needle that much.
I now designate one of my primary cardholder accounts to always report a balance. I also make sure that my one AU account always reports a balance. That way I have been able to avoid the all zero (no revolving balances) penalty.
This is basically what I am going to do. I'm going to tweak which cards report and trim it down a bit for her. Basically AZEO but actually 2 because one will be an AU card. I'll report back in a month or two and see if things stabilize.