Yea they're much less likely to get money from someone with paid off assets!

No, I think he is paying the balance due in full.

OP on that topic
https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/what-is-the-best-percentile-for-credit-utilization/

How much of your buying power is being used is huge on your score.  It doesn't matter if you make 30k or 300k a year. If you have 20k in buying power on revolving credit, and Your using over 50% or close to 50%, your score will be lower.  The more you use, the lower score.  It probably went down because you used more (like buying Christmas presents) of your revolving credit.

Don't worry about it OP.

Bingo.

Also bingo

It's also an incentive to you to keep churning out the debt. Just another pyramid scheme. Wait! those are illegal. Never mind.

Nope.  If that were true, having no debt and a history of paying lots of loans off early would give you a perfect score, but it doesn't.  

When I paid my mortgage off, my score dropped like a rock.  Why?  Because my length of credit history on open accounts dropped.  That doesn't mean I am more of a risk, just that creditors make less money in interest off of me.

Wrong

Probably a FACO.

LOL

Why do you care about your credit score??

Freeze that shit. I froze mine and it jumped 20 points.

Same, and my score is well over 800 as well. None of that is accurate.

Nope.

Because self reliant people in control of their destiny utilize all available tools and keep them in top condition?

Which FICO score?

They like you to have a mortgage or vehicle loan in addition to credit card utilization in order to obtain the highest credit score.

OP, what app are you using to check your score?

CreditKarma, and anything that uses VantageScore 3.0, always seems to be a fair amount off from anything that any actual lending agencies use.

same for me.  I use CC exclusively all month long and pay off every month.  when the CC companies report my credit there is a sizeable balances on them.  so it appears to them that I am a debt slave but i never pay interest on it as its paid off.
I have 5 open accounts that are all very old.  so it appears based just on my credit history that they can make $ from me.

Some cards have a twice monthly balance auto pay option. Look into it.

Who cares?

Fuck that number.

Mine took nose dive after I paid of my mortgage and auto loan,I recently got an Amazon card just to maintain some type of credit.

My wife and I are extremely comfortable with our finances, 63/62 years old, no dept, no notes, no house payment, pay in cash and I dont even care about my FICO

I have Lifelock and they send me an update every three months and it too is ticking down for no apparent reason other than, we dont use credit and no one is making money off of us.

Screw FICO, it is a scam

Your not using any credit and you wonder why your score is dropping?

You need some teenage conventional wisdom, finance a car and get some credit cards (with balances) to bolster your credit score!  Winning!

This is false. None of that is necessary.

Nothing validates the movie Idiocracy more than an arfcom discussion on how credit scores work.

It doesn't sound like you need credit. So why do you care what your FICO score is?

The longer you go without utilizing debt the less certain the credit bureaus can be about your credit worthiness. It makes sense.

Credit scores can be a factor in other things besides getting loans or credit cards.

Insurance companies look at them also and it can affect rates.

mines like 525, don't sweat it Op

Lunch?  I didn’t get lunch!

I went in to the branch to order checks, I normally buy them online but my bank was bought out and before I ordered anything I wanted to make sure there would be no routing number changes to factor.  Anyhow I am in the office and the gent goes through my stuff after putting in an order for the checks, and doubling the order for free to make the cost the same as online. Cool.  Looks at my credit card there and tells me they have another CC product that has three times the cash back at a 2% higher card rate, which is moot because mine is auto paid  every month.  I haven’t paid CC interest in at least 18 years.  

Only hiccup the new card was supposed to be $2k limit.  For some reason the computer was putting my purchases into pending.  When I called about the card not going through the lady tells me I don’t have room as I am nearly at the $1000 limit.  WTF. I had a higher limit in 1988 from the cc app on the wall in the college cafeteria.


The last time someone mentioned my FICO score it was a car dealership management trying to tell me why they were happy to get me a 5+% car loan rate.  I did LOL in his ear, I had already negotiated a price on the truck and his condition was that he gets the financing.  I said fine as long as it was comparable to the credit union.  This went on for over a week of him coming down a half a point or so at the time.  Finally I told him just refund my deposit we’re done, a 790 credit score is not an impairment to the best loan rates.  Sure enough the next week and last week of the month he comes back with great news we got that rate you wanted.  Ok, I bought it.  Then the finance gal dropped it two tenths lower than he quoted.  Whoops, they lost the touch of gravy he was holding back.  


FICO didn’t even get mentioned when I did my home loan pre approvals.  

This

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Unless you're about to make a major purchase using credit, just stop paying so much attention to your score and go about your life

This is how I always joked it off.

“Holy fuck.. he paid it off and didn’t go bankrupt...... increase his credit limit”

It's a game in which the rules are hidden from the players and changed at the houses whim.
My question?
Why do you even care?

My house and car are not paid off, although I have plenty of equity in both. No CC debt.
Made my car payment an hour ago and checked FICO. Also 833, as it has been for months. Actually down from 842 after I cancelled joint accounts with my late wife.
People forget that time on bureau also plays a part in scoring.

Lol, all these people who think our elections are a complete sham yet then decide to swing purses over fucking FICO scores and how they’re calculated…

Yep. If you’re going to take out a mortgage (or any other large, long term loan) in the next year, work on maximizing it. Otherwise, losing sleep over a 750 credit score is useless and you should be cashflowing everything.

At least that’s how I look at it, but I’ve never been accused of being sophisticated.

In your situation the score is influenced significantly by your credit card balance. If you run up the card(s) during the month your credit vs available credit ratio skews and your score drops. As soon as you pay off the cards each month your ratio swings and your score shoots up in real time. Check your score again right after you pay the cards off this month and you’ll see the score back up where it should be.

Working on it or a year will likely not work out - it often takes long than that to correct mistakes on your credit - so I don't think this is a good plan.

You don't need to "chase" your credit score.  You simply need to understand how it is measured and take simple actions to correct things.

1.  Pay your damned bills.

2.  Pay your damned bills on time.

3.  Pull your credit reports every year for free and review them for any negative entries or inaccuracies and get them resolved if present.

4.  Your length of credit history matters.  Keep your OLDEST credit card open.  Never close it.  Put some recurring bill on it that will keep it active (I use my Netflix subscription) and set the credit card to autopay every month.  Zero maintenance.

5.  Your average credit age matters.  Don't close too many accounts, as this can impact your average credit age.

6.  Your utilization matters, a LOT.  If you use credit cards, even if you pay them off, make sure you are not going over 30% of the total utilization across all your revolving credit limits.  Even 10% utilization matters.  I typically avg 5% but when I breach 10% it impacts my score a few points.  It gets worse the more utilization you have in a given month.  So to improve this, simply ask you credit card companies to extend your maximum credit availability on each card, or make weekly payments on the cards to keep the balance lower.  This should not be an issue for anyone with good credit, as most cards give crazy high limits automatically.

7.  The number of accounts matter.  You dont want too many, or too few.  If you only have a single credit card, your score will be lower.  I find 4-5 revolving credit accounts seems to maximize scoring, especially if you do not have other diverse types of debt (home, car, etc).

8.  Diversity of accounts matter.  Having revolving debt accounts, mortgage accounts, and installment loan accounts improve your score, as it displays you are responsible with multiple types of debts.... secured and unsecured.  That said - you can maintain a very high score with ONLY credit cards.  Prior to having a mortgage, I could get into the 790's pretty easily with just two credit cards and responsible history and utilization.  

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Directly from Experian

Credit scores are a joke, plain and simple. The wind blows your credit can go up or down.

No way.  How?

Easy.  Collections.

I am helping someone repair their credit right now.  The credit was 524 with no open accounts, only closed accounts with late payments, and 3 collections.  Opening a secured credit card and making one payment on time brought it up to just under 600.  It will be very hard to get much past 650 until the collections roll off or are paid and removed.

Nope