FICO scores. Can someone try to explain this to me?

[mickeysgal]

We opened up a home equity line of credit. As part of the process, the bank sent us a letter...one to DH and one to myself, explaining our FICO scores. His was in the 780's and mine was just over 800. We owe only our mortgage (which is low in comparison to the house value) and pay off our credit card monthly (although we have other credit cards, we don't use them). Other than that...we, as a family owe nothing. And this has been this way for the past several years. I know these are decent scores, and we have nothing to worry about in this regard, but I am curious as to the reasons that they listed in the comments section. For example, my reasons, in order, are:
1. You have too many accounts with balances
2. You have either too few or too many established accounts in your credit report
3. You owe a high amount on your revolving accts which may include credit card balances
4. You have a high ratio of balances to avail. credit limits on your bank/national revolving accts.

Can anyone explain this stuff to me? I'm going to order our reports to see if anything else is going on that we don't know about.

Any advice or explaination?

 

[salmoneous]

My guess is the credit report is just spitting out random fotnote explanation. Or, maybe not random, but not directly tied to your history.

 

[mrsltg]

Hmmm.. this is interesting. Your scores are considered "Super Prime" which is fantastic. The comments and the scores don't add up. I agree with checking your reports and seeing what's on them.

 

[golfgal]

I wouldn't order your report because that will actually lower your score for having too many inquiries. Your scores are beyond excellent and I would leave well enough alone.

As for some of the "comments" if you only have one or two revolving accounts and you have a credit limit of say $5000 and have charged say $2500 in one month but paid it off right away, they will say that your balance/limit ratio is high. If you have 20 credit cards and charge the same amount on one card and don't use any of the rest of the cards then you wouldn't have that comment, same goes if you have 20 cards and charge $1000/month on all of them but have a combined limit of $50,000. It is one of the quirks of credit scoring.

If you have too few/too many (I am guessing in your case too few) they can't determine by your history if you are a good CREDIT candidate, meaning will you pay your bill in a timely manner. Also, if you only have a few credit entries on there, say your mortgage, a car loan and two credit cards and they all have money due on them, not late just the remainder of loans, then 100% of your credit accounts have a balance. This is all it is saying.

They have real live people that will look at your credit report say "slam dunk" and you are approved. DH is in the finance business and I have done some temp work in his office (at his old job anyway). Part of what I did was pull credit reports and "evaluate" them. If we saw a 650 score or above, as long as there weren't a lot of late payments, they were pretty much approved. A score in the 800's is almost unheard of in lending circles. The difference in your scores my just be that you have one card longer then your DH or something.

You don't need to do ANYTHING about your reports. Do you know how many 400 scores would come across my desk?

 

[we3disneygo]

we got the almost same wording on ours and the score was in the same range?????? maybe a standard response? I don't get it. hey golfgal thanks for all the info.!

 

[Charade]

My score is in the 750 range and I got those comments on my last report (last year). I think it's just footnnotes as another poster stated.

 

[Christine]

Same here. Our scores were in the 800 range and we had the same comments.

 

[skuttle]

We had the same comments on ours, too. Must be standard.

 

[DVCJEN]

I can explain this. We had a meeting with the Credit Bureau at work just a few weeks ago. It was explained by the bureau rep like this---- those things or reasons listed are suggestions of things that "might" be preventing your score from being a perfect score. They do not necessarily all apply, especially in the case of a high score. If a person has a lower score say --580 then there are a great many more items that may be impacting the score and the reasons listed may all apply in that case.

 

[golfgal]

I should say that for our latest mortgage we had the comment that we had too many inquiries. The ONLY inquiry on there was the one the bank pulled. Again, it isn't something to worry about with that score. Our score was over 800 so we didn't think twice about it either.

 

[mickeysgal]

An update:

I logged onto www.annualcreditreport.com and was able to immediately view our credit reports from all three agencies. You are now allowed to view your credit reports for free once a year. I know a previous poster mentioned that this inquiry may disturb our rating, but its been quite awhile since we've looked at them. I feel that the inquiry by us was justified...especially with identity theft so common nowadays. Anyway, I didn't anything on mine. On DH's, apparently we were 30 days late with one payment in 2002. I'm not even sure this is true - its so long ago, there is no way I can remember, prove, or disprove it. This most likely is a contributor as to why his score is slightly lower than mine. I see a whole lot of requests for our credit history, though. Maybe these are all those credit card offers that you get in the mail? I have no clue. Our credit cards have very high limits and we basically use only one or two at the most/month. The ratio of what we charge to what the limit is is low, very low.

Anyway, don't get me wrong, we're pleased with our scores, I just wanted to understand the nature of the reason codes. After viewing our credit history, I am no closer to understanding their reason codes and how they apply to us.

 

[Shugardrawers]

Well now I understand! I checked ours recently and it had dropped by 50 points for seemingly no reason. No late payments, not over limit on anything. We have 2 credit cards that we rarely put much on and almost always pay off each month, sometimes as long as 90 days for something really expensive. Anyway, over the past couple of months we've had to put a couple of expensive things on our cards. Am I correct that even though our standing is perfect and we aren't over limit the drop in score is due to the debt/income ratio going up a bit? And that when I pay them both off again next month the score should go up?

 

[golfgal]

An update:

I logged onto www.annualcreditreport.com and was able to immediately view our credit reports from all three agencies. You are now allowed to view your credit reports for free once a year. I know a previous poster mentioned that this inquiry may disturb our rating, but its been quite awhile since we've looked at them. I feel that the inquiry by us was justified...especially with identity theft so common nowadays. Anyway, I didn't anything on mine. On DH's, apparently we were 30 days late with one payment in 2002. I'm not even sure this is true - its so long ago, there is no way I can remember, prove, or disprove it. This most likely is a contributor as to why his score is slightly lower than mine. I see a whole lot of requests for our credit history, though. Maybe these are all those credit card offers that you get in the mail? I have no clue. Our credit cards have very high limits and we basically use only one or two at the most/month. The ratio of what we charge to what the limit is is low, very low.

Anyway, don't get me wrong, we're pleased with our scores, I just wanted to understand the nature of the reason codes. After viewing our credit history, I am no closer to understanding their reason codes and how they apply to us.

No one can pull your credit report with out your consent so you shouldn't have a lot of inquiries that you don't know about on there. Your current credit card companies may pull them from time to time but that is part of the small print that you signed when you got the card. If you aren't a collection problem, they shouldn't be pulling your report more then every couple years. Any time you apply for credit and they pull your report, your are entitled to a copy of that report, your bank should have sent you a copy although you "technically" have to request that. It is a good idea to check periodically but your bank would have alerted you to any problems with identity issues.

 

[Boston Tea Party]

Pulling your OWN credit report does not lower your score.

I recommend that you ask your questions at creditboards.com. There are many knowledgable people there.

Also, I have a service that allows me to pull once a month. I watch for strange activity in order to nip it in the bud, so to speak. I know too many people who have had their identity stolen. What a nightmare.

Best of luck to you.

 

[tiggerlover]

Same here. Our scores were in the 800 range and we had the same comments.

Ditto for us.

 

[disneynutt1225]

I wouldn't order your report because that will actually lower your score for having too many inquiries. Your scores are beyond excellent and I would leave well enough alone.

Actually, pulling your own credit report does not affect your score AT ALL. There are people that check their reports daily because you can do it as often as you like and it won't be an issue. Now, if you're going on a crazy CC application spree, then yes, those would more than likely lower your score.

I second the recommendation for creditboards.com. The information there is so great!