uh-oh, i may be getting into a new bucket soon

[valley_man0505]

Does anyone know where the cutoffs are for the length of history buckets?  From what I have read, they appears to something like 2, 5, and 10 years (I haven't really paid attention past 10 years).  My length of history is now at 9 years, 11 months.  Just when my scores were starting to make huge progress and I was within a few points away from getting my US Bank secured upgraded to unsecured, it looks like I am going to be dumped into a new bucket.  Any idea of what kind of score change to expect for a bucket change.  My score is being held back by a bunch of baddies from 5 years ago--could there be a chance that maybe people with scores of 10+ years have a HIGHER probability of having baddies since they have been around longer (meaning my peer to peer comparison won't be as bad as I am afraid it will be)?

[Anonymous]

It is very hard to predict. Actually, many people report a sudden drop. But they get back to normal after 1-3 month.

Message Edited by Physicist on 09-11-2008 12:02 PM

[Anonymous]

I am not sure there is a set number for total history ( I think average age and number of accounts are involved too). In general, people with average age and other factors seem to move into a new bucket around 12 years in so you might have nothing to worry about.

[Anonymous]

I don't think you really have much to worry about until you hit the 19+ year bucket. Between 5 and 19 I don't think there are too many drastic changes that I have identified yet. Please report if there are any changes. Thanks.

[valley_man0505]

It may be hard to tell now--I just had 5 more med collections post to my reports and my score just tanked after being steady for a couple months.  Am now up to 10 different med collections all because of my $&%* ex-wife.

[haulingthescoreup]

I'm so sorry to hear that.

I've done some more digging around here, and the posts I've seen make it look like any collection AT ALL, no matter the size or the date, is going to define your bucket, regardless of history. In other words, you either have one, or you don't. So until you can get those things off of there, I'm afraid that the bucket question is moot.

[RobertEG]

Here is my basic understanding of scoring "buckets."  FICO has approx 12, which are actually different scoring algorithms.  The criteria for algorithm categorization is a FICO trade secret, and you will never find a specific definition anywhere, so we can just read and speculate.

It is my understanding that a first major cut is made based on the presence or absence of major derogs in your file, which places you into a either a "clean" or "dirty" file categorization.  I say this based on reading of many credit scoring publications on the market.  That seems to be the first major divison in most published credit scoring models.  There are then apparently sub-buckets under major buckets, such as lenght of credit history, but when still in the dirty bucket category, changes are not significant for other factors, such as length of credit history, as observed by Hauling.

But for those with a "clean" file, the sub-affects of credit history, inquiries, etc, may have a more significant affect within their category.

That is my understanding.

Message Edited by RobertEG on 09-16-2008 09:57 PM

[valley_man0505]

It looks like the re-bucket may have happened.  I was expecting my length of history to hit 10 years this month.  Well, today, SW showed my EQ score dropped 30 points.  There were no credit alerts that would indicate why the drop happened.  I do have a judgement that should be hitting my reports soon, but I don't think that was the cause of this drop--I would think SW would give me an alert if a judgement is the cause for the drop.  If it was simply a re-bucket, I am really not looking forward to what will happen when the judgement does actually hit