this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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There is a lot of misunderstanding about credit scores posted here.
The purpose of credit scores is to answer only one question:
How good are you at pay back a debt if someone were to loan you some money?
Thats it. Everything on how the score is calculated is weights and measures to service that question.
The reason that making payments on an active loan improves your score, is because it is real proof you are getting money from somewhere (the credit score doesn't care where) and you're choosing to spend that money on an agreed payment on the debt. Lets say I'm a lender and I'm considering giving you money, and I see that someone prior to me make a similar agreement, and you're honoring that agreement to pay, then it gives me a good reason to think you'll also pay on debts you have with me. The reason your score goes down when you pay off your last loan, is because I can't see you still have the money to pay on a new loan. It means you're a (slightly) higher risk because I'll have to take it on faith that where ever you got the money to pay off the last one, you'll also be able to get that money to pay off the one to me. There's no guarantee for that, so its a risk to me, a lender.
Another thing I'm seeing missing in the discussion here is:
"Doing X makes your credit score go down"
Technically true, but many of those things that make it go down only do so for a short time. Maybe a month or two (using modern FICO score system).
There can be arguments as to which inputs they use, and how much each of those inputs affects the score. So much so, rating agencies themselves even change their minds over time. They update what they think is important and downgrade what they think matters less. You've likely heard of a FICO score. Over time there have been SIXTEEN DIFFERENT VERSIONS of what makes a FICO score source. Some of the variation you see when you get your score from different places is those places using slightly newer or older versions of the scoring system.
Unfortunately lots of organizations that have nothing to do with lending you money are choosing to use your credit score for their own systems. I've heard of insurance companies using FICO scores as inputs to how they calculate premiums, which they shouldn't do. Some employers are using these now to filter applicants. Those employers are perverting the credit score system (again, a system just for loaning money) as a measure of trustworthiness or fidelity. I wouldn't mind laws that prevent that as that isn't what credit scores are designed for, and doesn't answer that question.
That's the point!!!!
The only information we are given is that the OP paid off a debt and the credit score went down. You claimed that maybe it is only temporary. But that still goes against your giant text claim.
Why does paying back a debt announce that you are bad at paying back a debt?
It doesn't say that. You're drawing your own conclusion from the score decrease. Also, I didn't downvote you.
If that was the OPs only long term debt being serviced, (credit cards don't count), the credit agency now has no proof you can CURRENTLY pay off a new debt. Meaning OP is a slightly higher risk.
Credit agency has no idea where the money came from that paid off the debt. It only knows that OP was regularly finding money somewhere, and that OP was putting that money toward debt as agreed. Did OP lose their job after paying off the debt and doesn't have income anymore? Did OP have someone else helping them pay that that person won't help in the future? The credit agency has no idea. It only knows that in the past they were able to service the debt, and today they have no way to measure if they can. So it is a slight increase in risk, meaning slight decrease in credit score.
All of that is technically true, but still kind of a shit policy as it consequently raises the cost of borrowing on someone who paid back the full loan plus interest.
You can rationalize all these shit policies with any number of talking points. Some of them might even be actuarially sound. But they're still shit.
Your complaint is with lenders then, not credit agencies. If someone misuses a tool, its not the fault of the toolmaker, but the person using the tool. Would you blame a hammer manufacturer because it is really crappy at driving in screws? I would hope not. You'd be upset at the person using the hammer to try to hammer in screws.
If the credit agency adjusts your score downward and then reports me out as "less credit worth" then my beef is the business that is effectively slandering me.
If the tool reports inaccurate information, the toolmaker is at fault.
Who would you rather give a loan to? A person who you know is currently able to pay you back or a person you know was able to pay back the loan 10 years ago?
The grade dropped as soon as the account was closed, not ten years later.
So this is
And the answer would definitely be 2).
The person who just paid me back, because they can obviously pay me back.
Exactly, so that answers the question. When you finish paying your loan, you stop paying back money and thus your credit score is slightly lower than when you were actively paying back.
That's the opposite of my point. Let me correct myself here. The person who just *finished paying me back because they can obviously *make every payment until it is paid back again, as they have obviously demonstrated.
This is mostly likely untrue because she was paying off her debt the whole time she had the loan, and her credit score and history were probably improving that whole time. Maybe her score went up 300 points over the years of that loan, and then dropped 35 points.
Until she paid it off, at which point it dropped.
Maybe, but I highly doubt it. And 35 points is a big drop when you're already in the 700-range. That can be worth a quarter point on a mortgage loan, which will end up costing you tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the note.
Which means the tons of points she likely gained by paying off the debt for years saved her at least a point.
I'm not arguing that a lower credit score isn't worse, I'm pointing out that cherry picking a single month movement to claim that she got screwed for doing something that actually likely helped her doesn't make any sense.
No. Because there's a soft ceiling. If she started in the 700s, she wasn't going to get a 1000 credit score by the end of the loan. Those don't exist. She wasn't going to hit 850 for carrying a single small commercial loan, either.
This isn't cherry picking, its about incentives.
If I'm carrying a car note and I don't want to be saddled with debt, I'm forced to take a credit hit because I'm finished paying my loan. This impacts the cost of a future loan when my car needs to be replaced.
By contrast, if I'm loose with my money, I'm effectively rewarded for refinancing or rotating out my vehicle before my loan expires and remaining in debt indefinitely.
The credit score becomes a means of penalizing people for failing to carry these burdensome loans uninterrupted.
Of course, assuming she started at 700, and not much lower. But even if she did start at 700 and only went to 800, that's still a net gain of 65 points.
lol. It's one number in a vacuum and you're basing your entire argument on it. Not only is it blatantly cherry picking, but you're assuming everything else in the favor of your position in order to make it as bad as possible.
You're moving the goal posts now. Before your argument was that paying the loan back in full with interest hurt her, which is almost certainly untrue and what I was addressing, and now you are arguing that she would have been better off going for a new loan in the month before she closed out the loan than the month after. The latter argument I can't really challenge as much but is pretty meaningless.
I know this is BS from personal experience. I've only ever had a small car loan, which I paid off early, and a mortgage. I carried credit card debt one time about 4 years ago when we moved across country and my wife was in between jobs, and that was only for about 3 or 4 months until her pay checks started coming in. And there was a good bit of time between when I paid off my car and got our mortgage and we got a fantastic rate and my credit has comfortable sat about 800 for close to a decade now.
Yes, it's annoying that you have to be using credit to prove that you can currently use credit responsibly. But what other way is there? Are they just supposed to assume you are good with credit because you don't use it? That's like thinking it's safe to believe some stranger you just met on the street because they have never lied to you before.
No it isn't. It's to force you to use credit under the guise of checking how good you would be at paying back.
I'm from europe, you know how much credit i had before i got a loan for my condo? absolutely zero. All they needed to know was that i had no debts, lived well within my means, knew what i was doing, not "how many credit cards and car loans have you got running". The best possible person to loan money to is someone with 0 credit history who can prove they've got a solid source of income, and are living well within their means. Because you know, once i bought my condo, paying my loan is the exact same thing as paying my rent.
And if you wonder if i got a decent loan with such a "terrible credit history". It was a loan with variable interest rate, after the first change, my interest dropped to 0 due to the financial crisis, and it remained at 0 until i paid it of.
Anyone actually believing the american credit score system is anything else than just a way to force you to use credit while you really shouldn't, is just indoctrinated. I'm sorry, but someone perfectly paying rent, and saving up for purchasing a house without ever using any credit is the perfect person to give a good mortgage too, and the exact kind of person this system sets out to punish because they're not taking part in the American banking system the way the banks want you to.
Okay, so the "solid income" component is easily provable.
How can a lender know you're living well within your means?
Paying rent is NOT equivalent to paying a mortgage. With rent, you're responsible for only making the rent payment. Nothing for housing upkeep and repair. Almost zero liability on how you keep your home could make you open to a law suit. No renter has to pay for the replacement of a roof or complete replacement of HVAC. Skills developed only to pay rent are insufficient for home ownership. That doesn't mean a renter can't grow to those home ownership skills too, but it isn't equivalent as you're suggesting..
Someone else already replied, but about living within your means, lenders can look up other debts you have, and missed payments you have. And they all request access to your pay slips so they get a basic view of your income. In the end it's close to the credit score system, with the difference that someone who doesn't have any loans or credit cards willl also have a good score since they don't have any missing payments, and haven't gathered too much debt already, which makes sense.
Regarding your point of rent vs ownership. In the end you can still boil it down to needing a certain amount of money/month. Only part of it is your mortgage of course, you need to save up for bigger things, but it's not that different. And i don't even see this being relevant in this discussion, i don't see how the credit score system would predict you being up to being a house owner and setting money aside for bigger repairs.
It basically goes like this: here (the Netherlands) debt is registered, including what your monthly payments on those debts are. When you want to get a new loan you go to the bank with proof of income, they then look at your existing debt / payments and make an estimation of your cost of living. You will only be approved for a loan if monthly payments for current and the new loan + cost of living < your income.
You’re not supposed to be able to borrow more than you can afford the payments on.
Of course you can still get into trouble if you have a sudden drop in income, but at that point you can’t get any additional loans.
They also register non-payment of debts, not just on loans but also on things like energy bills, rent, cell phone plans, etc.
The best situation is that they have no records on you, because that means that you have no outstanding debt and no failures to pay.
The first part of what you say is still off even. Its based on other factors like debt to income, income amount and credit utilization. different lenders also use different calculations depending on the type of loan. For example a mortgage wont be the same as an auto loan and theres even a system for renters the scores can vary wildly and really the numbers dont even mean fuck all half the time. Underwriting is a whole career and a company doing lending that knows anything will look at how well you actually pay your obligations and weight it with how much you make, practically ignoring the score itself. Ive seen people with 350s get top tier financing and people with 700s without even a thin file (low history) get completely denied or stupid interest rates.
For reference I havent missed a single payment in my entire life, my credit is damn straight outside of some credit utilization on low limit cards and because of that my score is “mid” i dont really care at all though cause chasing the number will stress you out and you wont benefit much from it if you just make your payments anyways. Ive still gotten approved for most things ive applied for because of making my payments
You're off on some of your measurements. FICO scores are based on only 5 inputs:
source
I already touched on that with the 16 different types of credit scores: source
You're right that underwriting is a whole career, but we're not talking about underwriting. We're talking about FICO credit scores. You're bringing in things that aren't credit score, but are factors that lenders use for determining loan worthiness and interest they charge, but that isn't FICO credit scores.
Myself and OP are talking about the price of apples here. You're asking me why an apple pie costs so much. Yes, apples are an ingredient in apple pies but not the only thing that influence the cost of the pie.
You are correct, I misinterpreted a bit. Sorry for confusion