These guy's are idiots on how they calculate the scores.  Which I figured but....

Bank of America recently set up a free score monitoring system so I thought what the heck, I would sign up just for curiosities sake about 2 weeks ago in April, 2016.

My scores-which I guess shows that they monitor/recalculate every month at a minimum.
Nov, 2015-836
Dec, 2015-823
Jan, 2016-823
Feb, 2016-794
Mar, 2016-794
Apr, 2016-788

In February or March, 2016 I paid off the final $4,000.00 for my 2014 minivan loan that was originated in 2014.
I still owe $12,000.00 on my pickup which I purchased used in May, 2015 for $15,000.00 + my trade in.
I still owe about $52,000.00 on my house which has been refinanced since about 2012.
No new credit cards and I pay my cards off every month.



From Bank of America's website.

Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high

1.  FICO® Scores weigh the balances of mortgage and non-mortgage installment loans (such as auto or student loans) against the original loan amounts shown on a person's credit report. Your score was impacted because your proportion of installment loan balances to the original loan amounts is too high.
Keep in mind:

In general, when a person first obtains an installment loan, the balance is high. A person with a loan balance that is high in relation to the original loan amount tends to be viewed as more risky to lenders.
Length of time revolving accounts have been established

2.  FICO® Scores consider the age of a person's oldest revolving account and/or the average age of revolving accounts. Your score was impacted by the relatively low age of your oldest revolving account and/or the average age of your revolving accounts.
Keep in mind:

People who do not frequently open new accounts and have longer credit histories generally pose less risk to lenders.

Once you get burned by this, you get real leery about getting any kind of credit card or store credit or anything. And of course, that counts against you too.

What was the initial refi amount for your house?  Note that it doesn't say that the ratio of your balance to the VALUE is too high.  What they are saying is your balance is too close to the initial amount of the loan -- meaning it is a new loan.  If you hadn't refi'd your house and the initial amount was still say...  $100k and you only had a $52k balance they wouldn't say that because the ratio would be favorable.  But if your refi started at $65k and you've paid it down to $52k over the past couple years they'd say that the ratio is still not ideal.

Anyway, the formulas they use are incredibly complicated...  and they have to give SOME reason why you didn't get a perfect score, although your scores are very high.  Their methods have been fined tuned by many years of experience with millions of people, so saying they are dumb...  meh.  They may not make you happy, but there is a method to their madness.

Can you tell I worked too damn many years in the banking/mortgage/credit industries?

First off, I am not chasing or interested in improving my score.  It was a more, WTF do they use to calculate the score number, sort of a thing.  Since BOA offered to provide for free I figured why not sign up for it.  My mother was a loan officer at a savings and loan for about 20+ years.

In May, 2015 when I purchased my used 2010 pickup and financed the $15,000.00 loan the salesman said that my FICO score was about 813.  I told him that I really did not care and as of today I still don't care.

Originally purchased my house in 2009 for $90,000.00.  Then in about 2011 or 12 I got something from the bank about refinance my loan through them, free of closing costs, and my interest rate went from like 5.25% to 3.5%.  Catch was that I could only refinance for the at signing/current home loan balance which was about $61,000.00.  So I refinanced the $60,000.00+/- I owed at a lower rate as I would have been foolish not to.

The only 2 things that I owe are my home $51.000.00 approximately and my truck about $11,000.00 approximately.

I have had the same credit cards since about 2008 and 2010 respectively.

Any Lowes/Home Depot/Sears card or similar I cancelled about a year prior to the drop in my score.  In only ever sign up for some of the cards to save the 20% or so off a purchase and then I cancel the cards.

Cancelled cards don't just drop off, they are part of your history.

Your age of accounts is likely abysmal due to this practice, also your accounts opened in recent history is probably poor and each pull for opening dings your score briefly.

Also, credit isn't solely based on how you pay off your cards. In fact, if you buy something and pay it off before that balance posts to the credit agencies you haven't utilized any credit as far as they are concerned.

It's a game, you need to know when your card company posts balances to agencies, pay on time but after balance posting, then next month that utilization will shift. Stay below 30% utilization on any given card.

The other thing is closing cards or accounts does is kill your overall credit potential. The larger your pool, the more significant your proper utilization is.


You really should care about your credit, unless your going completely off the grid. I agree in most cases its bullshit but in the fiat currency game You and I part of, you need it.

This is much ado about nothing.  Credit scores above 740 all essentially get the same rate.  You don't get better rates having an 830 than you do a 741.

Credit scores can also vary greatly depending on the day of the month your score was pulled, due the amount credit being used even if it is paid off completely every month.  

Don't sweat it.

The credit game is quite a fuckover-
My boss, Who rarely uses credit, has a ton of money in the bank, went to buy an 80,000 Audi a couple years ago.  Was going to put 20,000 cash down, He had to hit 3 different banks to find one that would loan him the remaining 60K.  we are talking a guy that easily make 200K annually, has no other outstanding debt.  Pays cash for everything.  He was told, that is the problem.  He didn't have an established credit history, so the best rate he could get was 9.9%  He paid the car off in 2 years

Meanwhile, I was making around 80K then, Several credit cards and a mortgage.  Credit score right around 700, bought 2 new cars that year at 2.9%

And this why FICO score is a complete joke - it has nothing to do with what you make in a year vs outstanding debt nor your ability to repay said debts (Dave Ramsey-ism).  I'm sure my habit of not taking car loans affects my score, but I do have a house note, and use a single card for all of our expenditures and pay off monthly, so I guess that's enough to keep some score.  

I honestly couldn't give 2 shits about my credit score other than the fact that if can impact my insurance costs.  If/when that does happen, I'll do my best to find an insurance company that will take assets/income into account vs FICO in their risk-assessment.

I hate the whole FICO thing.

I recently got dinged and have been embattled in getting it corrected, because, I DO care about my score.


In January, the wife and I were like 870 and 860.   We checked our score in March and noticed that it had dropped to like 630…and we were PI$$ED.


Turns out, we paid off some personal lines of credit with Wells Fargo, and when we did, I went in to close the accounts.  The lady at the bank advised me that closing those accounts would damage my credit score, so I left them open, figuring access to credit is a good thing in a  major emergency.  Turns out, those accounts have a $25.00 annual fee that we were unaware of.  We moved and left a forwarding address for like 90 days…moved our other bills, etc., etc., etc.  Well…those fees came and were not paid, so WF put two 'delinquent, accounts closed' on our credit, dropping our score.


Yes…I have culpability, but damn, you're going to plug me in the backside for $25.00?  Needless to say, we have contacted WF, got the charges removed and are in process of getting those notations removed off of our credit rating, which they have assured us they will do.


The truly stupid thing is…whether it was $25.00 or $250,000…the result would have been about the same.


It's a racket to suck you in.

It can also screw you on a job.  I almost didn't get a job one time because someone somewhere put on my report I had a bankruptcy.  Lucky for me the employer realized I would not go BK on a 25 bill that was not mine in the first place and hired me.   It took about 6 months in total to get fixed.

My credit score just dropped from 710 to 635, and the only thing that has changed is that I payed off my truck in February. It's bullshit, especially since I'm looking to buy a home.

That's really fishy....shouldn't have dropped that much. You should look into that a bit more. I bought my first home last year and my score was 690. Fast forward 10 months and I just paid my truck off. It's now at 730.

As mentioned by a previous poster, once you around 730 - 740, it really doesn't matter if it's higher or up into the 800s. I recently bought a Polaris RZR (financed half) and qualified for their lowest tier, 1.9%) My fiance just bought a new Mustang and she doesn't have much credit at all. Her score was 701 and she qualified for Ford's 0% financing. So what if her score was 800? Wouldn't have mattered...doesn't get any better than 0%, right?

To the average to upper middle class person, there is little to no benefit of even stressing over your score as long as it's in the low to mid 700s. My $0.02