Originally Posted by
QL_714
The amount of misinformation about credit scores posted here is staggering. Most of you need to visit Creditboards or MyFico forums before you post such information. Just a few of things:
1) Increasing your CL’s will only help your score not hurt it. By increasing your CL’s you will lower your utilization.
2) Closing an account has little to no effect on your score. It will not affect your AAoA until it falls off in 7 – 10 years if at all. It will affect your utilization depending on how much debt you have outstanding.
3) I have never seen where to many accounts actually hurt your score. Counting closed accounts I have more than 50 on my report.
4) Not even the credit bureaus know exactly how your score is figured. FICO is the only one that knows there own algorithm.
5) The comments you receive with your score do not come from FICO. They are put there by the servicing company that pulled your score and are pretty much worthless.
6) Most important, don’t take my word for it. Take a few minutes to visit the sites I mentioned and find out for yourself.
No 1 what is CL's, credit limits? if so raising your CL beyond your annual income creates concerns and will negatively effect your chances of getting credit beyond your income. Credit is based on your ability to pay, card companies will not qualify you for much more credit than you can afford...thats why in order to open 3rd and 4th cards with a single provider some people have to rebalance CL's
No 2 cancelling a credit card can definately hurt your score, if you dont have much credit it raises your utilization and lowers your available credit and if you cancel your longest open card it hurts your score by lowering the length of your open accounts. if you close it yourself, paid on time, and have plenty of other credit it does not have as much effect.
no 3 like i said all three agencies quoted too many open accounts as a negative on my wifes score...your assumption in #5 that these comments are worthless are wrong...they may be made by the servicing company, but they are made to give a reason why the score is not higher than it is...proof is: after we closed my wife's excess accounts her scores increased 20-40 points.
no 4 and 6 are based on the fact that credit scores are not the same as a credit report from the big 3 companies, Fico scores are not the only scoring available, there are others, and you are correct in the fact that only FICO knows how they create their scores...#6 is a link to sites which speculate as to what effects things have on your scores...which as you have said are not published and are a secret calculation, so they provide educated guesses as to what things are positive and negative to your scores. they may be good reading, but are not going to refute anything I have said here