WHAT HAPPENED to my credit score

[Anonymous]

Last year my credit score was good - 726
This year it has dropped to 679 -- what happened?
no delinquencies, all accounts in good standing, no additional debt accrued......???????

[Anonymous]

Pull a credit report? 726 is not great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pull a credit report? 726 is not great.

726 is literally "GOOD."

[Anonymous]

do you use credit on a regular basis?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:do you use credit on a regular basis?

Not regularly but in spurts. That may be it, percentage of CC use.....???

[Anonymous]

Check to see what precipitated the hit. This happened to me. Turns out my brother in law was delinquent on a loan I co-signed for him, and that's all it took (company only notified me after it was in default and my credit score had dropped). (Also never co-sign a loan for anyone)

[Anonymous]

Assuming there is no fraud or missed or late payments, then credit utilization is probably to blame. Maxing out your credit cards every month and then paying them off to only max them out again will result in a high credit utilization score and hurt your credit score (although 679 isn't awful it would obviously be nice to get it higher).

Some ways to address high utilization, assuming you can afford it and you are using your cards for points/cash back, is to either pay off your cards early (like every 2 weeks) or take out another card and split your charging across them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Assuming there is no fraud or missed or late payments, then credit utilization is probably to blame. Maxing out your credit cards every month and then paying them off to only max them out again will result in a high credit utilization score and hurt your credit score (although 679 isn't awful it would obviously be nice to get it higher).

Some ways to address high utilization, assuming you can afford it and you are using your cards for points/cash back, is to either pay off your cards early (like every 2 weeks) or take out another card and split your charging across them.

This is very good advice. I also want to point out that it depends on when your credit card reports information to the credit bureaus. My due date is the 27th and the balance gets reported to the bureaus on the 2nd, so even though I steadily use my card and only pay it off once a month, my utilization is excellent because when it's reported it's always low (some charges take a few days to post so it's hard to hit 0 exactly).

OP you can pull a free report and see the dates when your cards report to the bureaus and asks your credit card company about changing your due date if the current set up causes you to take a utilization hit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Assuming there is no fraud or missed or late payments, then credit utilization is probably to blame. Maxing out your credit cards every month and then paying them off to only max them out again will result in a high credit utilization score and hurt your credit score (although 679 isn't awful it would obviously be nice to get it higher).

Some ways to address high utilization, assuming you can afford it and you are using your cards for points/cash back, is to either pay off your cards early (like every 2 weeks) or take out another card and split your charging across them.

This is very good advice. I also want to point out that it depends on when your credit card reports information to the credit bureaus. My due date is the 27th and the balance gets reported to the bureaus on the 2nd, so even though I steadily use my card and only pay it off once a month, my utilization is excellent because when it's reported it's always low (some charges take a few days to post so it's hard to hit 0 exactly).

OP you can pull a free report and see the dates when your cards report to the bureaus and asks your credit card company about changing your due date if the current set up causes you to take a utilization hit.

This is good to know, I never knew that or thought of that!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pull a credit report? 726 is not great.

726 is literally "GOOD."

+1
It's okay to not be snarky all the time, truly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pull a credit report? 726 is not great.

726 is literally "GOOD."

+1
It's okay to not be snarky all the time, truly.

That is not a bad credit score

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pull a credit report? 726 is not great.

726 is literally "GOOD."

+1
It's okay to not be snarky all the time, truly.

That is not a bad credit score

+1
Not a bad score at all but someone wouldn't feel good about themselves if they didn't come here to post that it wasn't "great"