Current Events > Credit score keeps going down but no negative behavior

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Now two years since my only ever 30 day missed payment (broke college student facing eviction moment)
Lowish and consistent credit utilization (I put everything on cards and auto pay the statement from bank account)
Just got an unprompted credit increase on my Chase card too

still my score keeps going down at a time I am looking for apartments. There are places I've looked at that ask for a minimum score of 680 or something for example

Call your bank

It's happening to me as well. I'm paying down credit and it dropped from 782 down to 756... I don't understand how it works.

I can only assume that you're being dinged for high utilization.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Credit utilization is a comparison of how much you owe compared to what your credit limit is. Having anything under about 30% is irrelevant. Going too high is negative. You don't actually need to use the card at all for there to be a positive effect on your card, just having it open is good enough.

My score has been stable for many years and I often kept my reported utilization at 0% by making weekly payoffs on my cards.

Hard checks on your credit will lower score a point or two per hard check. I think they take 1-2 years to leave your account.

I'd recommend using Credit Karma to get an idea of what factors might be dragging you down. Also look at an actual credit report to see if anything is out of the ordinary or unexpected on your report.

Yeah, it could be that you're using your card too much. Like if your credit limit is $2,000 and you're consistently using $1,800 per month, even if you pay it down to zero, that's showing as high utilization because you're using almost all of your credit limit.

It could be simply that the utilization is high at the moment of the statement or scoring.

30% across your cards is still fairly high utilization that will bring down your score a bit.

But you don't need to carry a balance between reporting periods for your score to go up/stay positive.

Doe posted...

There are places I've looked at that ask for a minimum score of 680 or something for example

if it dips 10 more points. we're all going to be concerned because apartments will label us as a risk and wont rent to us.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Because "lowish" could still be higher than desirable, and if it is set to autopay the statement balance then the reported utilization will be higher than 0%.

But without hard numbers it's impossible to say

It doesn't add up though. Grab your free annual credit report, your Experian app FICO score, TransUnion myFICO app score, and then discover or Capital One credit wise app for TransUnion FICO score.

And then on the side, you can then use credit karma to dig deeper. But nothing that the Experian app or the others won't already tell you.

And it doesn't seem like TC has a thin credit profile or has been actively seeking credit or getting inquiries.

Those old missed payments would ding, but these should be years old at this point and not dragging down this much.

We recently got a Costco credit card and its low maximum is fucking us over I think. It is only a $8500 max and we are both using it for its high rewards. Credit dropped from 801 to 786 and that is more than just having the hard check.

Going to have to call them and get our maximum credit increased.

I try not to completely rely on auto pay. I try to settle up my balances every 2 weeks on payday. In my mind that "guarantees" that when they pull my balance it'll lower than whatever threshold.

Then again, I've clawed my way above 800 so I don't really care about optimizing my score. I just think checking my financials regularly is a good habit to have.

Dissident_77 posted...

We recently got a Costco credit card and its low maximum is fucking us over I think. It is only a $8500 max and we are both using it for its high rewards. Credit dropped from 801 to 786 and that is more than just having the hard check.

Going to have to call them and get our maximum credit increased.

Are you sure it's the max limit and not the fact it's a new card on your account which lowers your "average account age" by a decent amount? Average account age is a factor in your score too.

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Because TC said low utilization, but also said they put everything on the cards.

Jupiter posted...

Are you sure it's the max limit and not the fact it's a new card on your account which lowers your "average account age" by a decent amount? Average account age is a factor in your score too.

15 points just for that though? It also says my utilization went up. Doesn't help that my oldest credit card dropped me to $5k because I almost never use it.

Regardless, pushing up that maximum to higher than $8,500 should help, right? No idea why they opened it that low.

IMO credit scores are a meaningless metric to be concerned with anyway and I say this with having one over 800. But I'm also pretty debt averse.

Will_VIIII posted...

IMO credit scores are a meaningless metric to be concerned with anyway and I say this with having one over 800. But I'm also pretty debt averse.

It's meaningless only if high

Will_VIIII posted...

IMO credit scores are a meaningless metric to be concerned with anyway and I say this with having one over 800. But I'm also pretty debt averse.

Unfortunately it's something that many people need to be aware of. Having a low credit score can be a barrier to many things

Dissident_77 posted...

Regardless, pushing up that maximum to higher than $8,500 should help, right?

Yea, raising the ceiling should raise your score. It's what I did when I found out about that some years ago. I went and increased the limit on all of my cards and shot my score up to the 800s.

Jupiter posted...

Yea, raising the ceiling should raise your score. It's what I did when I found out about that some years ago. I went and increased the limit on all of my cards and shot my score up to the 800s.

My guess is that they gave us a lower limit because my wife is the primary and I am the secondary (but it is on my credit report too). She also has strong credit but not quite as strong due to her age.

Also, what happens when getting married? I swear mine was 820 before getting married and hers was like 760. Now we are both around 785.

Not like it really matters at this level.

Dissident_77 posted...

My guess is that they gave us a lower limit because my wife is the primary and I am the secondary (but it is on my credit report too). She also has strong credit but not quite as strong due to her age.

Also, what happens when getting married? I swear mine was 820 before getting married and hers was like 760. Now we are both around 785.

Not like it really matters at this level.

I think 8500 is a respectable limit for a lot of cards. Some lenders are more generous than others. Amex for example will offer very high limits. Chase and Capital One less so. Discover kind of in the middle. But it also depends on the interest rate environment. Right now a lot of cards have scaled back a little bit. Most of my cards are less than 8500 though. Some are much higher, but that was over years of Credit Limit Increases.

I don't know about the Costco card specifically, but you can usually look up the card and find other credit card nerds who've talked about how often you can request a CLI for a given card, and whether or not they will do a soft pull or hard pull on your credit to do the CLI. Some card issuers sometimes ask for proof of income. And I've had card issuers decline a CLI for me before because they looked at my credit report and were basically like "we can see we're already the highest credit limit account you have so why do you think we would increase it more".

Anyway, as you say it doesn't really matter that much. >750 or so credit score is all the same for most lending. And you can game utilization a little bit by just paying it off in the middle of a pay period.

Kuuko posted...

Anyway, as you say it doesn't really matter that much. >750 or so credit score is all the same for most lending. And you can game utilization a little bit by just paying it off in the middle of a pay period.

Yeah, I should pay now as we had to buy a new washer & dryer, and also finally bought a new dining room table. That all totals like $4000

I think it's because I'm putting it all on one card even though my total sum of credit utilization is low. I started putting it all on the card that has the best cash back.

Inquiries and average age of credit (opening a new account or old account closed) can bump it down a bit. Not sure if wither of those apply.

Have any old loans and or credit card accounts of yours recently closed? These affect your credit history.

Had a dumb drop in credit because from what I read of the factors, I wasn't using it enough.

That's even more stupid, IMO. My utilization was both low AND I was paying off big chunks at a time (sole credit card, consistently under 30%, couple other cards weren't used).

EDIT: Checked again and it jumped back up to near what it was before the drop within a single month. Credit bureaus are some foul creatures, I tell ya.

This topic got me thinking. I checked my credit score and mine is going down too. I have high utilization but when it was higher my credit score was still going up even when I was almost maxed out and I have 100% payment history.

Credit scores are such bullshit. I paid off my credit and it went down, probably because they couldnt keep squeezing interest out of me so they had to penalize me some other way

Credit checks to get an apartment should be illegal.

Even homeowner insurance will jack up your rate for low credit.

Credit is a scam.

Could have sworn I saw a recent news article about them changing the way they are going to calculate scores.

Hard pull sucks

I double-checked mine since I haven't looked in a couple of months, and it looks like I'm still sitting at ~810 (though it momentarily dipped about 8 points in June, for some reason). What worries me a little is that I actually have very little debt right now - I just have two credit cards at the moment, one of which is never used. I paid off my student loans back in November, but I think they're still showing on my credit report, as the FICO score at a glance that my credit card provides me says I have 18 lines of credit open (and I believe I had 16 separate student loans). I really should be taking advantage of Annual Credit Report.com to make sure that's the case, but either way, I'm wondering what's going to happen to my score if/when they drop off of it.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I would agree with the second point - you do need to put at least a token charge on the card periodically to keep the account open. Generally an account only closes when it's inactive for like 18-24 months minimum.

The account closing affects your maximum credit, number of credit accounts and average age of accounts and would drop your score yes

If you're using over 30% of a credit card's limit, this can lower the credit score temporarily. But if it's regular, it's gonna be trending down. It's considered a risk.

So use less than 30% of your credit card's credit limit every month, and make sure the balance is paid off (of course). If you're using over the limit, having multiple credit cards can help, as you can evenly distribute.

NightRender posted...

I try not to completely rely on auto pay. I try to settle up my balances every 2 weeks on payday. In my mind that "guarantees" that when they pull my balance it'll lower than whatever threshold.

Then again, I've clawed my way above 800 so I don't really care about optimizing my score. I just think checking my financials regularly is a good habit to have.

Same. I don't rely on auto pay either. I'm OCD about checking every week and paying off anything left over that the auto pay doesn't pay (such as pending transactions).

My mom isn't very tech savvy, and she relies on auto pay, but there's always some balance carry over, especially if a transaction is pending and that doesn't always get counted towards autopay. And I feel like that could be potentially adding interest.. Even if it isn't, it's piling up every month, and that ain't good. Especially if you have a habit of not checking your bank account.. Including how much you have left in your checking account.

Auto pay could be set up on a date where it gets paid literally on the last day of statement, and I think that could make things smoother maybe. But I think that's risky. Because if there's some weird serve failure that delays it, then yeah not good.

Kuuko posted...

I think 8500 is a respectable limit for a lot of cards. Some lenders are more generous than others. Amex for example will offer very high limits. Chase and Capital One less so. Discover kind of in the middle. But it also depends on the interest rate environment. Right now a lot of cards have scaled back a little bit. Most of my cards are less than 8500 though. Some are much higher, but that was over years of Credit Limit Increases.

I don't know about the Costco card specifically, but you can usually look up the card and find other credit card nerds who've talked about how often you can request a CLI for a given card, and whether or not they will do a soft pull or hard pull on your credit to do the CLI. Some card issuers sometimes ask for proof of income. And I've had card issuers decline a CLI for me before because they looked at my credit report and were basically like "we can see we're already the highest credit limit account you have so why do you think we would increase it more".

Anyway, as you say it doesn't really matter that much. >750 or so credit score is all the same for most lending. And you can game utilization a little bit by just paying it off in the middle of a pay period.

The Costco card does give low limits. I got $7k but another Citi card I got gave me $25k so its definitely something with the Costco card.

As for Chase, they have a soft limit of 50% of your total annual income across all cards. So your income definitely comes into play with them.

What's the difference between FICO Score 8 (what I got in the OP from Experian website) and Vantage Score 3.0? I just got a background check for an apartment and Vantage Score has my score as 732.

Doe posted...

What's the difference between FICO Score 8 (what I got in the OP from Experian website) and Vantage Score 3.0? I just got a background check for an apartment and Vantage Score has my score as 732.

FICO is the one that's actually used by lenders. But the way it calculates scores is all proprietary. VantageScore is an alternative to FICO that no one actually uses but it's easier for you to find your VantageScore because the credit bureaus want it to be popular. Your score between the two will probably be similar but not exactly the same.

Technically there are multiple FICO scoring models for different types of lending too but they don't differ enough to get into the details too much. If you have good credit in any of the above scores you probably have good credit on almost all of the others. It's all kind of arcane and opaque as you can tell.