35
votes
Accepted
What's the best way to maintain your credit score after paying off all of your debt?
All I can tell you is what I have experienced.
Since paying off all of my debt, my credit score is the highest of my life, hovering just above 800. I have one open credit card.
If I were in your ...
- 74.9k
19
votes
Accepted
What is the full formula for calculating a FICO 9 credit score?
The FICO score is an invention of one company, FICO (formerly called Fair Isaac). The exact formula is a trade secret that the company does not reveal. This allows them to maintain a monopoly on ...
- 23.8k
17
votes
Accepted
What happens to your credit score on prolonged absences from the US?
Neither paycheck deposits or rent are factored into your credit score. Only lines of credit.
If you don't close the credit cards and you use them at least once in a while, then pay off the bill on ...
- 50.4k
16
votes
Accepted
What tools are there to investigate why my FICO score would have dropped significantly?
Besides the things you mentioned, there are a couple of other things that can cause your credit score to go down:
Credit utilization could have gone down.
As JTP reported in this legendary answer, ...
14
votes
Achieving ideal credit card utilization above 0%
Basically, I want to ensure that I maintain a utilization rate greater
than 0%, while paying my balance in full every month.
You will have a utilization of greater than 0% and you will be able to ...
- 116k
13
votes
Accepted
Achieving ideal credit card utilization above 0%
The only time I had a reported zero balance was when I paid in full the day the bill was cut. The bill itself was zero, the utilization was zero. It was an experiment, and cost me 20 FICO points, if I ...
11
votes
Accepted
Does the history of credit utilization affect FICO score?
Credit utilization, which is the amount of actual debt compared to the amount of your credit limits, is an instantaneous number. Your credit report does not show history on this, so the score is ...
8
votes
Accepted
Will U.S. citizenship boost credit score?
To the best of my knowledge, your immigration status is unknown to the credit reporting agencies, so changing from visa to green card or from green card to citizenship will have no effect whatsoever ...
- 127k
7
votes
Accepted
Mortgage rate shopping - 14 day period
The credit requests will show up, but will not affect your credit score for the "shopping" period. Based on this from myfico, it looks like the interval might be 14, 30, or 45 days ...
- 17.2k
7
votes
Accepted
Credit score getting lower - but I'm doing everything right?
It could be due to your "Credit Utilization" rate. If you have one credit card with a limit of $5,000 and charge $4,500 each month and pay it off in full you'll get dinged. If you look at ...
- 1,171
6
votes
What's the best way to maintain your credit score after paying off all of your debt?
There are 5 components to your credit score.
Age of accounts. Just as it sounds, this is how old your accounts are. Paid off accounts can fall off your score and, in the case of a mortgage, likely ...
- 1,251
6
votes
How much of my mortgage do I need to pay off for the FICO "Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high" reason code to disappear?
I have a FICO 8 score that is fluctuating from 810-830 and the only reason code given is:
Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high
If that message is the only one you have, and the ...
- 116k
5
votes
Accepted
What sort of demands is it reasonable for a home loan lender to make on the borrower, if any?
In your example you want them to loan you $200K. Yet without a job you don't have a source of income. The $100K deposit either wipes out your savings or makes a significant dent in your savings. The ...
- 116k
5
votes
How can one get their FICO/credit scores for free? (really free)
Check with your bank.
As of January, 2015, the following banks and credit unions are offering free credit-scores:
Barclaycard US
First Bankcard (the credit card business of First National Bank of ...
- 173
5
votes
Accepted
Can Having Less Debt Lower Your Credit Score?
Paying off the car loan could have a small impact. 10% of your score is based on credit mix and if you only have a credit card, that could lower your score. The auto loan would be considered an ...
- 1,434
4
votes
Disputing Items to Improve Credit Report
A few points:
The reason your lender is asking you to be above 580 is because that is the magic number for an FHA loan where your down payment would be only 3.5% (the US Government effectively ...
- 1,521
4
votes
How does a FICO score start out?
The FICO score ranges from 300 to 850, and as a practical matter it's rare to be at the extreme low end of the range.
You may jump in with a decent credit score before long, as you accumulate a ...
- 4,839
4
votes
Accepted
Does not having the full (good) payment history on report negatively affect me?
The date opened (6/06) is there, and any negative remarks would be there for 7 years, and there are none. This minor detail, lack of specific history, isn't anything to be concerned with.
4
votes
How to build credit score as fast as possible
First, you need to ask yourself why you want a higher score. There is a point at which you gain no benefit from increasing your score.
Second, you need to understand that the credit utilization ...
4
votes
Accepted
FICO score reporting variation
The timing of the reports can be different, the weightings of information on the report can be different, and the scale itself can be different as there are variations of the FICO scores, and ...
- 20.1k
4
votes
How badly is one's credit score affected if one stops paying one card but keep paying others?
The biggest single factor in your credit score is payment history, which makes sense since the credit score is supposed to indicate the likelihood that you will pay off any additional debt.
The ...
- 113k
4
votes
How much of my mortgage do I need to pay off for the FICO "Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high" reason code to disappear?
According to my experience, no amount will fix your issue.
Note that the exact calculation of Fico scores is not public, so anything is a guess.
Your mortgage gets reported with the current total ...
- 36.7k
3
votes
Accepted
What is too much credit utilization on credit card?
Your utilization is MORE hurt by your total utilization, your credit score is drastically lower than it could be because of this.
You want to get your total utilization under 10% (or under 30% or ...
- 20.1k
3
votes
Accepted
Does closing accounts lower one's credit score?
If you mean closing credit card accounts it will hurt your credit score in two ways:
1) It will reduce your available credit, which in turn will increase the utilization percentage of your credit if ...
- 50.4k
3
votes
Accepted
How long before proper credit card utilization counteracts the hard inquiry?
TL:DR - as long as you always pay on time, Utilization is the largest factor, and the one most in your control.
Your question is off a bit in how you compare the factors. A hard inquiry has a 2 year ...
3
votes
What risk factors might a credit issuer weigh more heavily than a credit monitor?
Credit Karma is not intimately aware of all of the underwriting guidelines at American Express. It's just a third party service that tracks credit. Its data roughly knows what people's credit looked ...
- 48.3k
3
votes
What's the best way to maintain your credit score after paying off all of your debt?
The generally accepted formula for maximizing your FICO score is 3 revolving accounts with only one reporting a small balance (~5% of the limit), one open installment account and one open mortgage ...
- 1,184
3
votes
How badly is one's credit score affected if one stops paying one card but keep paying others?
How bad will it hurt? Badly. VERY badly. Depending on your current scores a single 30 day late can cost a hundred points or more. Before stopping payments, I would suggest looking for ways to use ...
- 1,184
3
votes
Accepted
Would Getting (and Paying) an Installment Loan Benefit My Mortgage Rate
You've asked (or implied) a lot of semi-related questions about how your finances will impact your loan costs. In order to answer them, it may help to step back and consider the bigger picture about ...
- 16.7k
3
votes
Can Having Less Debt Lower Your Credit Score?
Can paying a loan in full or closing an account hurt your credit score just due to the fact that you are making less ongoing payments, even though that is only because you don't owe anyone anything?
...
- 74.9k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible