Credit scores - why fluctuating so much?
 

So I happened to notice my credit score taking 30 point swings on a month to month basis with extremes being almost 50 points top to bottom over the last two years.

Trying to understand why this is given:

1. We have zero debt
2. We pay all our credit cards off at the end of every month.
3. We don't miss or are late on payments.
4. Our credit is frozen so there are no checks or new cards added for 5+ years.

Any idea why its so variable?

They consider your monthly credit card bill. Even though you pay it off every month, if the ratio of credit card debt to total debt changes, so does your credit score.

I considered that as we use CC for literally everything.... I should see if that correlates to our monthly spending.

Believe it or not, zero installment debt shaves points. If you have no debt month to month, your credit card/total debt ratio is atrocious.

+1

The funny thing is that there is no standard for the scores. The one you get from the credit card statement or the credit bureau is different from the one the banks & lenders use. Even there, one reporting agency comes up with a different score than another even though they use the same data. Each one has their own secret formula. Credit scores are part data, part Ouija board.

Yep, I heard that if you're getting a mortgage, it's a different score than if you request it yourself to "check" your score. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there are 2 or 3 different scores. The whole thing is a racket.

My score is 787 every month, other than one month. I have no debt of any kind. My one and only credit card balance is always about $600 which gets paid off in full each month. Limit is $31,000.

The one month that it dropped (20 points) was.when I had $3500 in charges. I paid it off in full though the total was picked up prior to pay off.

Interesting...Credit Karma shows my TransUnion score as 806 and my Equifax score as 810. My Credit Union is showing me 844, noting "FICO® Score 9 based on Equifax data". Capital One shows my score as 806, noting "FICO® is a different credit score model than the one we use for CreditWise, which is the TransUnion VantageScore 3.0 credit score.

Is there any wonder why I do most of my banking thru my Credit Union?

Just got F'd over big time. Wife bought a new Lexus. They said they would setup auto pay. She opted to do online billing. Well guess what? They didn't setup the auto pay. Mother@#$@#$@ ended up reporting non-payment and we got dinged. SO pissed.

This.

My credit score jumps up and down and the only variable is how much the credit card balance is. I too pay mine off for the statement balance every single month for the last 10 years or so.

I have two credit cards. One for personal use, and one for the business. If we have to fly a few long missions the gasoline bill alone can be a grand per day. It can be 20K in a single month. It gets paid off every month and we pay zero interest. My personal credit score will jump and down from high 770s to 825. Nothing changes except the balance on the credit card, and the slow decrease on the airplane loan.

I can't imagine wanting an expensive toy like an Cessna 182T without a business to pay for every time the engine starts. I guess it is no worse than most weekend warriors race cars for fun. Big boy toys.

Honestly I don't care one wit about my credit score. I have liquid funds, and no need for a loan. The only debt I have is the airplane, and it has increased in value since we bought it. It makes us money, so it is a real business asset.

Also good points.

It started when we just paid off our house.

It really doesn't matter to me as we don't need to borrow - but looking at the history its just weird to me.

No idea what my credit score is...don't care because the only credit I use is card credit I pay off in full when the bill comes. No need to borrow money.

Yeah I'm not really sure why I care much either.

Not really any major purchases forseen in my future save retirement move potentially.

You could try calling the lender to see if they'll remove the late payment from your credit reports. If they can see your wife set up auto pay, it should be a no brainer. If they can't, chances are against getting any love.

You should have paperwork you had to sign authorizing the autopay. Send a copy to the dealer AND the credit bureaus (certified mail).

Edit: as said above, if your wife has been making payments then there are no delinquent payments and they falsified a report that hurts your reputation. Lowlife lawyers love cases like this.

I'd erase that. It could be interpreted as you saying you are doing a tax write off on a personal toy. There 82k new IRS agents out there wanting to prove their worth and looking for a promotion.

This. Let's say you have $10,000 in credit limits and one month the bills total $1,500. The next month they total $3,500- your score will be lower because they report the statement balance to the bureaus.

If you want a higher score, you can raise your credit limits so the percentage of available credit increases (ideally without a hard credit pull). Or, you can make a payment BEFORE the statement comes out so the balance reported is smaller.

Supposedly your score it the highest with about 5% of your limit owed on the statement.

FICO was developed as a predictor of bankruptcy and morphed into a lending tool.

Why do I care?
Putting aside financing a new car, boat, whatever... your insurance rates are affected. Future employers look at scores.

I and the Chief Sandwicher are in competition over our scores. We keep track. Mine has dropped below 810 only once in the last 8 years. That was when I put 100% of a major fence project on plastic.

She maintains a HELOC so she keeps winning.

900 is possible. I've seen it a couple of times (not my FICO).

Interesting - how much earlier?. I'll try this as an experiment

We experience the same fluctuation. It's caused by the charge card balance(s) fluctuating high after purchases, even though we pay off all balances monthly. The suggestion to get higher credit card limits can backfire- as the increasing amount of available credit to you dings your score - even if you don't use it.

I just looked at Credit Karma. My score dropped 19 points in July after we had about $4k in charges, then it went up 17 points in August after we paid off the balance and only had about $1k in additional purchases. All this with a Fico that ranges in the 815-830 range.

As long as the payment is processed before the statement comes out. If you pay online, 2-3 days before the statement date should do it, especially if you pay at the credit card's site.

I seriously doubt that.

Our airplane is just work truck. It never gets started unless it is for a customer project that we invoice. 100% all legitimate deductible expenses. We never go fly for fun. No $200 hamburger flights, if a client is not paying us to photograph a site, then we don't even go to the airport, open the hangar or turn the key.

We were audited in our second year because the first year of startup costs we made no money at all, just spent money like a drunk congressman. I spent two weeks putting together a paper copy of every single expense, used two reams of paper and spent lots of money with our CPA. The auditor said we were just $20 bucks short, and she did not even open the file as it was more expensive for the IRS to open the old files than the 20 bucks. I have records of every single expense, and every penny of earnings. My CPA checks it out, and runs the reports and files our taxes.

Just like a plumber and his work truck, it is a piece of work only equipment.

Getting a new credit card will hit you. Actually, any new debt will.

I was thinking "I dare the IRS to go after Glenn! Chances are high he'd come out even or they'd owe him money." That's based on his posting persona and how he takes care of his cars. I feel like I was pretty spot on.

LOL ... Reading obscure Off Topic Forums is their best way to climb that ladder for sure :D.

My score averages about 820 and the only time it went down, was when I had a balance of about $3500 on a limit with about $50,000 for one month.

I always pay off the credit card every month.

Paying off your house may have messed with long term relationships with a creditor. House loan takes a long time to pay off so you have credit with the same place for a long time, once that ended, your next longest financial relationship may be much shorter.

The bureau doesn't know if you paid it off or not. It just knows the balance on your new statement.

Glenn's integrity means nothing to a weaponized auditor.
My father was the target of an over zealous IRS auditor who was new and looking to prove himself. He had to have his CPA/tax preparer endure absolutely moronic demands. Eventually, dad said "enough!" and told the auditor that he would answer no more questions and demanded a decision on the investigation. His CPA said he should go to the auditors boss with legal charges against him. The IRS answers to no one but themselves and have the power to ruin people.

Interesting topic as this is something I was just thinking about especially about the credit card balance and installment loan thing.

Recently bought a set of Turbo calipers from Sunset (shockingly Brembo did a new run) and paid for construction materials shipping from AZ. Used my Apple Barclays card since 5 figures in charges netted me $250 in Apple gift cards for the new iPhone.

Here's the rub. FICO has been 821 for some time now. No debt, card balances paid off every month, Barclay paid off, but I was dinged 13 points on FICO because, I guess, buying stuff.

I can understand getting dinged for carrying balances but you should almost be encouraged to use credit by increasing your score if you pay it off every month. There's logic to that. I don't understand how you can be penalized for using credit responsibly AND have a lower score for not having an installment loan which is one reason my score is lower than it can be from what I've read.

Someone needs to fix this.

I feel sorry for the person that has to read through all my posts for tax information. ;)

See, that is why I have so many posts, to hide all my nefarious tax schemes. :rolleyes:

They certainly don't care about the size of the target much. Our first year we only had 20 grand of business, we started in June of that year, and our aerial camera system alone cost way more than that. Much less airplane rental, (we did not own an airplane for a few more years) and a ton of computers. Heck, just the software packages we had to buy were crushing. Starting a business is more expensive than you think. And we did not take a draw (get paid) by the business for a long time, just spent money to get it started.

We did not not need to pad the expenses, and we had receipts for them all.

It is funny that the credit bureaus look so heavily at the credit card debt as a measure of ones credit ranking. The IRS loves credit card purchases. Your credit card company has every single charge, and to exactly who the charge was to from the day the account was opened. All electronic records and easy to check, and make into a spreadsheet full of purchase data.

If we use a business to provide us equipment or a service, and we write a check, or pay cash, we are required to get the business FEI or EIN and send them a 1099 at the end of the year if we spent more than $600 per year with them.

Except if we used a credit card, then no 1099 is needed. The IRS loves credit card purchases.

I sure don't want the torture and work of another audit. I would far prefer severe sunburn, and a week of oral surgery over another audit.

They're coming to gitcha Glen.... 72K posts and not one cent of declared "Pelican posting" income :D!

its because its a fiction made up in the late 1980's to hurt people. it is an absolutely terrible way to organize a society.

yes, i have an above 800+ credit score, and its still bull****.

I've opened an email conversation with VantageScore Solutions who is a model developer that provides logic to credit bureaus. It's going as expected with them saying they rely on actuarial tables but clearly their business logic is flawed. I am hoping to escalate it as best I can.

Another thing, my credit limits keep getting raised. Just got an email from Citibank. I guess that's good but who knows.