BillyBaloney

Go to your county clerks office and ask them to pull up what they have on you. Something was recently filed on you causing your score to drop. Maybe a judgement or a lien? Ask for a printout.

You may be able to look this up online as well.

Aristophanes80

You can view your full credit report for free from all three bureaus once per year at annualcreditreport.com or from TU and EX once per week at creditkarma.com. If there is erroneous information hurting your score, you can dispute it with the credit agency directly and/or contact the bank or creditor to have it removed.

rove312

Thanks, CreditKarma shows that it's my wife's medical bills that have gone to collections. We generally keep our finances separate, and I wonder if it's proper that it's dinging my credit.

elg26

Can someone explain why there is such variation in credit scores from different sites. When I sign into Experian, it says I have in the high 740s - low 750s across all credit bureaus.

But when I click the into viewing my FICO score on both the Chase website (from my Slate card) and the Amex website, both of these sites report my FICO score in the mid 770's.

This has been a consistent pattern for months.

Why the difference? And do I assume I need to follow Experian as the accurate one (I will be buying a house in the next 1-2 months)?

Thanks in advance

reft

There isn't one FICO score, there are probably 100. There used to be a public Google Docs spreadsheet out there that listed them. You have FICO scores, FICO Auto scores, FICO Bankcard Scores.

Each company uses different scores.

For "Free" scores: American Express (AX): Experian FICO8 overall score. Citi reports a FICO8 Bankcard score which has a range to 900 from Equifax. [US] Barclays pulls TransUnion (TU), using a top score of 850, don't know which one. Chase's Credit Journey product pulls TU and uses a Vantage Score (v3.0) with a top of 850. (The prior Vantage Score had a top of 990)

AX's Credit Secure Product uses a "PLUS" Score, so it'll be different from their 'free' score. These are often called "FAKO" scores since they're not actual FICO Scores. I think Credit Karma reports a FAKO, not a FICO.

All of these formulas weight the same variables differently. Payment History is always a heavy one. There's a lot of web sites out there that describe roughly how a scores is built, but the exact formulae are not public.

Since the AX Free [not Credit Secure PLUS] product is overall, not bankcard or FAKO, it might be closer to a mortgage score.

Generically, if you're going to get a mortgage, don't open any new credit lines, pay down what you have; if you can pay in full before the closing date on some of your cards, do that. Do the others the following month. Do them all before the pull for the mortgage. 0% utilization of your overall credit line isn't the best, you want a couple of percentage of your credit line in use. Go to the IRS web site, sign up, and pull your 4605-T before the bank does for the mortgage, and make sure it's accurate. It's free and once you authenticate with the IRS, you can instantly download. If you can't instantly authenticate, they mail you a code to complete registration. Pull your credit report from annualcreditreport.com. [this is the official one].

Disclaimer: you're getting financial advice from a anonymous poster on the Internet.

Beckles

I logged into Credit Karma this week and was a little surprised to see my scores had dropped 94/95 points. Turns out the scores really don't like when you have 127% utilization on one of your credit cards, I started hitting my Personal AMEX Delta Reserve card hard to get to threshold bonuses, AMEX knows I'm good for it apparently and keeps approving new charges.

Fortunately I don't need to apply for credit at the moment, this problem will fix itself once I pay my bill and the report a balance a bit more below my credit limit.

snic

I opened a Chase Freedom Unlimited as soon as I dropped below 5/24, so that I could start earning 1.5 points for everything. Soon after I got the card, I made a couple of large purchases that nearly maxed out the $15,000 credit line. I considered paying them off immediately (before the statement date), but figured Chase would think that's suspicious, so I refrained. (The purchases were not MS or illegitimate in any way.) Now, after the closing date, I'm surprised to find that my credit score has dropped more than 50 points. Nothing else of note has happened in my recent credit history, and I have >$100k in unutilized credit from Chase and other banks.

This is mildly annoying, and I'm curious how long this low score is going to last, assuming I pay off this large bill by the due date and continue paying everything on time, which I always do.

84fiero

IME changes from occasional large usage like that recover when the lower balance is reported the next cycle after you pay it off...assuming no other changes of course.

philemer

Very common. Score will bounce back after next cycle or two with "normal" spend.

snic

Thanks. I guess my decades of sleepy spending and gradual changes in credit score didn't prepare me for this sudden change, so it was a shock. Kind of dumb that my overall credit utilization is still extremely low, yet that doesn't seem to have mitigated the drop in score. (Or maybe it did, and it would have been much worse if my utilization were higher.)

takeshi74

Individual utilization matters as well as overall. Unless you're intending to immediately apply for new credit, request a CLI, etc, it probably won't matter much anyway.

FYI - Chase will perform a midcycle update if you pay a card down to $0. Otherwise, your score will recover from the utilization hit when the card reports on its next statement date.

You can pay them before statement date without worry and if you want to manage reported utilization then definitely do so.

IA_CC_Man

If you put a ton of business spend ( >200k monthly) on one of the CC that report it to your personal credit, can you avoid a hit to your credit score by paying it off a couple days before the statement date each month? I've read that you can but I've also read that the different credit bureaus could pull your balance at any point in the the month, potentially affecting your credit if they happen to check it at the wrong time. Can anyone confirm which way it works?

worldspan

isle-hawg

My data-point from monitoring my report among many sources for the last 10 years is that the balance on each card reported in the reports mirrors my last statement on each card, regardless of when I run the report. The reports also show the date that the banks reported the amount which line up closely to my statement posting date.

IA_CC_Man

Great, thanks! So no worries IF I'm diligent about making sure it is paid down prior to the statement date each and every time. To be safe I'd probably pay it off like five days before and then again a day before.