Ours have been in that range for years. But whenever we’d apply for credit, we’d hear we’d only need 740 or 760 to get the best rates so there’s some leeway to keep churning CC applications (mostly travel cards) and having scores that afford you the best lending rates. The applications just end up dinging you 5ish points each which is almost immaterial now due to their anti-churning limitations.
The recipe is simple. Keep your old credit cards and keep your largest lines of credit (or replace them with equivalent ones when churning). Don’t miss payments (I set auto payments on all accounts but still monitor transactions daily on all account using personal capital) and you should be fine.
Data Point: this is 2% utilization, 16 accounts, 21 year history, average length 7 yrs.
P.S.: the pay weekly is pretty absurd. Yes it’ll make sure your credit utilization is as low as possible but if you have over $200k of combined credit limit (ours), the difference between 0.5%, 1%, or 2% utilization is insignificant. I could see it if you’re on the bobble just under 740 or 760 and trying to get a loan but I’ve never done any of that. Our statement balances get auto-paid a few days before they are due and we only pay the last statement balance, not the current balance. No need to not keep your money in savings earning 2.5% a few extra days…
Understood. Not quite as much as yourself, I don’t think. But I also have plenty of available credit. Thing is:
If I did not follow Argyll’s learned teachings, and pay off my cards before the statements closed, my utilization would skyrocket upward and remain right at 100%. This would shut me down completely. I max out every card every month in order to harvest the rewards. Only by paying off when and as Argyll teaches can I make things work out. And I make a LOT more on the rewards than I could make with money in the bank.
I guess if you’re doing a lot of MS it makes sense but the WSJ article was probably not discussing that scenario. So for most people it’ll make little difference whether they pay the balance weekly or monthly unless somehow they are obsessed about being at 850 instead of 840 maybe.
Especially when you consider that you can simply ask your card issuers to align your billing cycles to the same date for all your cards.
I’ve seen a couple of scores around 820 to 835, but often these scores were to the detriment of the borrower. The 820 borrower kept the same mortgage for ten plus years instead of refinancing. This borrower might have kept the same two credit cards for the past ten years. Maybe they had a five year old car loan that should have been paid off early.
The author is leading to the wrong conclusion here. He’s suggesting that such a borrower purposely did not refinance the mortgage or kept an old car loan simply to keep a high credit score. My observation from being in a similar range for many years is that “longest active loan” is not a requirement – I paid off an old student loan and obtained two new mortgages and two refis and stayed in the same range. I do have a bunch of 10+ y.o. credit cards, which keeps my AAoA high, so that’s definitely a factor.
For anyone keeping track , I confirmed that for FICO’08, only a 1 year break (no inquiries or new accounts) is required for a perfect score. Even though I hit 850 in FICO’08, Vantage Score 3.0 is hovering around 830.
I’ve given the same advice . I’ve been a little busy and likely won’t air travel in the near future, so I haven’t bothered with all the airline card offers. There aren’t that many worth-while cash bonuses (I did CapOne Savor a little more than 1 year ago). I also didn’t want to refinance mortgages because my rates are lower (need another 1/8th drop from the current rates, fingers crossed). I don’t want to sell my good credit as I don’t think it’s a good idea. I buy cars with cash now . What else am I leaving on the table?
Have you encountered this recently? (In the past 10 years) I only have cards from the large issuers (Chase, Citi, BoA, Amex, CapOne), but they all allowed moving the billing date.
What used to happen, before the CARD Act, is all of the issuers would intentionally shift the dates around every month on each product to create more likely confusion and missed payments. The CARD act required them to have the bill due the same day every month. However, they aren’t required to change to a customer-requested due date. Additionally, this is the Due date that is mandated to be the same date, NOT the statement date.
If only one of your issuers is uncooperative, you could move everything else over to that due date.
I think also despite them maybe letting you request a “closing date”, that’s clearly not how it happens. The law requires the due date to stay the same each month. Therefore what’s really being set is the Due Date, and then they have their own algorithm to figure out the closing date, working back from the due date (XX-YY days before, excluding weekends and/or holidays, etc)
Agreed. And a huge annoyance to me since I could not care less about the payment due date. That said:
Couple of big boy issuers were able to accommodate my needs regardless. This “good list” includes:
Chase
Discover
Barclays Bank
Those issuers really have their acts together and understand the needs of customers like me.
Probably should add that Chase and Barclays Bank have since booted me as a customer. So while on my good list in terms of ability to schedule statement closings, those banks no longer make my larger, overall, good list.
I’ve been using it a bit more since this post. Did a Chase Ink card bonus and I’m in the middle of doing a Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus. I plan on doing another Chase Ink next. Also thinking about refinancing my mortgage.
Funny enough, my score might drop next month because I just had my first Chase Sapphire payment come due and I thought I had set up auto pay, but I hadn’t. Got the notification that I was late and I just so happened to have the money sitting in a Chase bank account. So I was able to pay the bill in full less than 24 hours after the due date. That was good enough for them to waive the late fee, but the CSR couldn’t tell me whether the delinquency would hit my report. I assume it will.
That’s the way it worked for me at Chase. I had set up a bill pay to occur on the due date, but one year in the future. I caught it and paid it within 7 days and it never showed as late on any CR. Like @meed18, Chase waived the late fee.
, I confirmed that for FICO’08, only a 1 year break (no inquiries or new accounts) is required for a perfect score. Even though I hit 850 in FICO’08, Vantage Score 3.0 is hovering around 830.
. I’ve been a little busy and likely won’t air travel in the near future, so I haven’t bothered with all the airline card offers. There aren’t that many worth-while cash bonuses (I did CapOne Savor a little more than 1 year ago). I also didn’t want to refinance mortgages because my rates are lower (need another 1/8th drop from the current rates, fingers crossed). I don’t want to sell my good credit as I don’t think it’s a good idea. I buy cars with cash now 
. What else am I leaving on the table?
