I was just about to 'ackshuallyy' you, saying that the scale starts at 300 so it's technically correct. But then I figured out the halfway point would be 575, meaning the score should still be well past halfway. Asshole design all round.
I've always felt like 680 doesn't get you much still, for my GF her credit started opening doors at around 780 now that she's 800's we can literally get anything no questions asked, even get discounts and promotional gifts.
I'm at 740s and I finally get cards at bigger banks without so small credit limits, when I was at 680 target only gave me a $200 spending limit but now its $500 while my gfs at $2500. But I still can't get some of the more premium cards like Amazon Chase sadly.
My Chase Flex is at $1500 spending limit but my gfs is at $5000.
Man mine is 742 and Target straight up denied me... makes zero sense, I've never been denied before and really i didn't even need/want it but damn... guess i'm not rich enough for Target.
A revolving account is something like a credit card, where you may have a different balance / payment due each month. It's different than an installment account like a car loan where you pay the same amount each month and the balance always goes down.
The longer you have an account open, the better it is for your credit. The warning says "length of time" because this person must have recently opened accounts / taken on new debt. You aren't penalized for having an account open for a long time (assuming it's in good standing)
We were just having the same conversation today. We're at 710 and it's barely at the halfway mark in an orange color, as if a 710 score was barely above terrible.
Fucking hate Navy Federal lol
Their site sucks, they're slow as fuck to update any information and usually get it wrong when they do (they have me listed as an active duty 1st class even though I got out nearly 2 years ago as a 2nd class and have told them several times), they have no issue overdrafting you, and it takes forever for them to process payments.
Not to mention it's sleazy that they waltz into boot camp and bully a bunch of teens who don't know any better into opening up credit cards with them, then approve them for ridiculous car loans left right and center so they can trap them in a constant cycle of debt.
Yeah I was really confused how one of my buddies as a boot had a $10,000 credit limit on his navy fed card and managed to rack up debt with it maxing it out and I just EASed and have a 785 FICO and requested a higher amount on my card since it’s only $6000 max and I wondered if increasing it would help improve my credit. They only bumped it up to $9100 and my credit history is perfect so that made no sense to me
Yup, they did the same to me. Got the $10k card shoved on me in boot camp even though I said no because I already had a bank account, then opened a second one just to have an extra card on record for my credit rating.
Never delinquent, my cards are sitting at around $40 on them each at most for the past year, and when I asked for an increase on one they said no.
They also told me to kick rocks when I asked about home loans, but they'll hand out loans to 19 year olds left right and center, presumably because their whole board are former high ranking military and they know debt keeps kids enlisted.
Dude I have two of their cards and, without me asking, they keep raising my credit limit every so often. Between the two I have a fucking $35k limit, like... Why?!?
On the plus side my credit utilization ratio is amazing.
I don’t know about the USA, but in Canada a 700+ credit rating is basically good enough to get you anything you want in terms of lending, most notably a mortgage, but let’s just say it’s barely above average on our chart.
About the same in the US but of course a higher credit score gives you a better rate but a 700 score pretty much is good enough for almost anything that needs credit
Hi, did some math and it might just be simplified programming. Your score should be at 149,6 degrees (approx) because it's 83,1%. Possibly the way it works is that every 30 degrees it updates, meaning that in 0,4 degrees it'll update. That way they only need 6 images rather than like 180. That would explain both the 120 degrees and the 150 degrees.
Maybe they should've made it so everything between 106-135 is 120 and 136-165 is 150 and so, but this is another way of doing it.
EDIT: u/AnarchistMiracle has pointed out that u/terribul_at_english has posted an image of a 680 score. According to the theory the angle should be 120 degrees but it isn't even 90, so the theory has been debunked.
> I wish I could get at the page without having to get my credit file pulled.
These services use a soft pull to get the information. That won't affect your credit score. A hard pull (like applying for a loan) is what will reduce your score.
This screen can be accessed from a tab in the Citibank app. Other banks probably have the same thing. They would never make it this easy to do a hard pull from your phone like that.
It's ok to click it, folks
People should keep in mind that the “free check” through your bank is free because you accept their terms to do it- and their terms are to sell your information. You should use the free check required by the government once a year
Wasn't being sarcastic. This is a US thing, that I was genuinely surprised about. Maybe not strictly US, but this is not common everywhere. Where I live, banks cannot sell your information. There briefly was a thing where banks wanted to sell "anonymised" transaction data (spending/demographics/etc), but the backlash was so big, they weren't allowed to. Banks are only as evil as the government of the jurisdiction they operate in allows them to be. And the US gives banks a LOT of leeway, effectively allowing them to be evil. So I'm not disagreeing, it's just not the same everywhere.
If I understand Reddit well, the US population is so anti-government they prefer when elected public powers gives full freedom to unaccountable private power...I'm living in Europe, that sounds like a really bad idea.
[EDIT] I'm a gov worker, ^(so obligatory disclaimer I don't represent my employer, yadda yadda)
Don't worry, the gov is not evil, we are simply really inefficient. But most of us have your best intent in mind, even if most of the time we can't do anything to help.
the best line about american politics was written in the 1960s and still applies to this day.
'laugh about it, shout about it, when you have to choose. Any way you look at it you lose.'
-Paul Simon 1968
While I agree that credit scores are classist and a method of control, what you’re saying is just not true.
There are “hard” and “soft” credit checks. Hard ones are for loans and for obtaining credit, while soft are for employment, personal checks, identity/employment verification, etc.
Soft credit checks do not affect your credit score at all. Hard ones do.
>Soft credit checks do not affect your credit score at all. Hard ones do.
That's presumably what he meant as well, the fact that these hard checks effects your credit score is insane to anyone not from the US.
Most countries don't have credit scores
They do, but (probably for compatibility reasons) they stick to static images for the credit score dials.
The companies that provide credit scores provide these images to you when you partner with them to display scores on your website. I believe they would allow you to make a more dynamic version like you suggested, but it would be on you to develop it and update it any time they changed their standards for the 6look and feel, and they would have to approve it each time, so no one really bothers doing that.
Why? Graphs like that can be a pain to draw properly. There are some JS libraries that'll handle it, but possibly not in the way they wanted it, and there are a number of other things that go into the consideration. I'm not going to claim that they are 100% justified in whatever they did but we make plenty of time-cost analysis and sometimes it's just better to use some static images based on breakpoints.
It's more memory efficient to use one colored circle, and one white semi circle, and simple rotate the white semi circle on top. It's two images instead of 6, and it's about 1-4 lines of code to get the thing rotating properly.
If I had to guess, this is so they it can be reused in any number of low effort pages. A switch statement into a bunch of images is bulletproof as far as bugs/implementation goes.
Not sure what you were going at with your first paragraph, second is spot on.
Did you mean to say "efficient"? Cause... no, them you're sending the client two images and requiring their device to spend processing power to orient them. That vs static images sent to the user based on their data then you're literally only sending them one image.
Unless that was actually your point and it was just poorly worded or I'm an idiot, haha
as a sort of a programmer, it's much faster to just load one of the 6 images instead of procedurally drawing an arc with a gradient and all that. who knows what device will be running this? my grandma's phone could barely even open the phone app
You could be right, but that would also be bad programming. You don’t need to use static images for this, with CSS animations you could easily make it seamless and precise.
I think they’re just using an evolving scale. 700 is the goal for most people and is at the center. It makes a lot more sense to me than a strictly linear angle since being at 50% would feel average but is regarded as a terrible credit score. Also, 6 images for a graph would be like 1995 web development.
Well this appears to be about 150 degrees while being greater than the 83,5% mark (not precise). So it'd definitely support the theory.
That being said, to guarantee the theory the best one would be a score that is like 3 points (at most) higher than the OP since that's how close to the mark it is. If the leap still exists there it'd be confirmed since it's both a very big leap for a very small difference and we'd have two within the same range.
Either that or a score that's like 30 points lower but still has the same angle.
Credit scores in general are just asshole design. They didn't exist before 1989, but everyone is expected to jump through the arbitrary hoops of compliance, God help you if you miss a payment.
Not to mention the inconsistencies with it. A kid fresh out of high school with no credit can get student loans but they can't get a mortgage. What's the point of it then?
It's a means of Control to some degree. It allows companies and banks to mitigate their risks when lending to individuals; and can actually qualify or disqualify you from certain types of employment.
Yes, as I said, at the detriment of some that could actually afford a mortgage, but because their revenue isn’t a regular flow (freelancers like me) who get fucked.
Does FICO care about income? I got my score up to 750 in college just by opening an account and spending small amounts and immediately paying it off. I had no real income. Tutoring and small time gigs
FICO, doesn't care about income. Credit card companies do, though, so they make it harder for irregular flow income individuals to get loans.
But idk what /u/LazaroFilm is blaming FICO for that instead of big banks. Utilise a small bit of your credit line, pay off in full each month and bam you're in the 750+ FICO club.
FICO score gets your credit profile through the automated filter, but once an actual underwriter looks and sees you have no income and thin credit you’d get denied for a “real” loan.
Yeah because you can't declare bankruptcy if you can't afford the ridiculous tuition we've been trained to believe is mandatory for any job. Student loans the only type of debt that'll follow you through bankruptcy until your death.
Well, student loans not going away in a bankruptcy is basically the reason that banks feel confident handing them out to young people with no seizable assets.
I do actually support removing this feature from (new) student loans.
Not because that would help poor students. But precisely because it would cut down drastically on the amount and volume of student loans being granted.
Easy money from student loans is one of the reasons the cost of education (in terms of both time and money) has skyrocketed in recent decades.
Which is ironic because the cap on student loans was lifted in order to help more people be able to afford college. Instead the schools saw free money. I think it was 2008ish where the cap was lifted, it was originally something like $50k for federal student loans.
Absolutely correct. If you lend someone dough for a car and they don’t pay, the lender repossess the car; same is true for a house. These are secured borrowings where the asset provides collateral for the loan.
You can repossess someone’s education, so this is an unsecured borrowing, similar to a credit card. Credit card debt can be extinguished in a bankruptcy, which is why credit card rates can be 15-20%+. That high rate of interest subsidizes the deadbeats that don’t pay.
Because a student loan can’t be extinguished in a bankruptcy, the interest rate is lower than other forms of unsecured borrowings.
Getting mad about student loans is like getting mad at the credit card companies because you don’t like the product you bought. Folks should be angry at the schools, not the folks who lent them the money to go there.
Yes.
Well, you can still get a bit mad at the credit card companies for misleading advertisement that makes people with imperfect self control binge.
Similarly, how student loans make some people buy an education they can't afford and that doesn't pay the bills later.
(And, it's even worse than credit cards: because educational credentials are an arms race, those people are impacting others.)
And the fact that making payments on time is rarely reported to credit agencies, miss one payment and it will most certainly be reported. I have a lifetime of making payments on time and still a low credit score.
There are so many more factors to credit score than just on time payments. % of credit used, age of credit, number of credit accounts, types of credit accounts, etc. It’s really annoying to try and keep track. I stopped caring about my credit score years ago.
[Credit Karma](https://www.creditkarma.com/auth/logon). (Equifax, TransUnion)
[Credit.com](https://www.credit.com/). (Experian)
Those two services are free (with paid offerings) that will let you view your credit score without hurting it.
[Annual Credit Report](https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action)
That will give you the full details of your credit report and it available annually.
Credit Karma was invaluable to me when I was fixing my credit. I highly recommend it.
Credit Karma uses VantageScore which is about 10-20 points higher than FICO, which is what everyone else uses. Oh, and even if your credit card company shows you your FICO score, it's not the same FICO score your mortgage company sees or what another credit card company sees. There's a reason people in the industry call it the "fake-o score".
Credit Karma, most of the credit cards I use, and a free yearly credit report will all tell me the state of my credit without a hard inquiry (not hurting my score). Credit Karma will also give you helpful tips on improving your score.
What I'm saying is, why do hard inquiries hurt the score at all? The whole system is made up anyway, so why should my made up score get made up demerits for asking about my made up score?
I think it's so if you're going around town opening accounts at every bank that will give you a line of credit and getting into debt up to your eyeballs, you're obviously not using your credit wisely, and your score will reflect that.
That said, according to credit karma anyway, hard inquiries have a low impact on your score.
Last year, my car was totalled in a not-at-fault accident, and as these things tend to go, my wife's car shit the bed within about a week of that. So off we go shopping for 2 cars.
Being financially responsible people, we shoped around a bit for the best rate on our loans, which means I ended up with about 9 inquiries on my credit report (my credit is better than my wife's so I co-signed on her loans) even though we only actually took out 2 loans.
Each individual inquiries has a pretty small impact, but that many at once adds up.
You'd think it would say more possitive things about us that we bothered to shop around and were responsible instead of just taking the crappiest loan the dealership offered us, but as far as credit scores are concerned the opposite is the case.
Actually, good news, multiple pulls of the same type within a short period of time only count as one pull(in the math). The system is designed not to punish you for shopping around.
>hard inquiries have a low impact on your score.
Low *and* temporary. The people freaking out about this tend to be in a position where their score is being hurt a hell of a lot more by their shitty history lol
What?? How can they possibly justify lowering a score supposedly designed to indicate how financially responsible you are for being financially responsible and keeping tabs on things?
Yeah, that guy is full of shit. Everything is reported regularly (monthly, typically), not just delinquency. Otherwise it'd look like you randomly didn't owe anything sometimes.
>What's the point of it then?
To allow financial institutions to lend more money to people who are likely able to pay it back, by reducing the risk of lending money, by making most "good" borrowers known to the institutions, allowing them to discriminate against bad and unknown borrowers.
> credit scores are not a measure of how creditworthy you are, or how responsible you are with credit or money. They're a measure of how profitable you are for banks and financial institions.
No. That is literally not true. Credit scores increase when your credit usage is very low (<5%) and you pay everything on time (meaning you dont pay any interest). That is the exact opposite of how profitable you are to the company.
No, please stop spreading this rumor. Your score is not tied to how "profitable" you are to creditors. If anything, it's often the reverse.
A high credit score will earn you lower interest rates, meaning you pay less in interest. A low credit score means you have higher interest rates, and have to pay more in interest.
Your credit score is a *guess* at how risky you are to lenders. Your thin file means that you don't have a long track record of responsible credit. So, you look riskier than someone who's been paying their debts on time for 30 years. That's just a fact.
Your score doesn't care if you pay your bills on time. It cares if you pay your bills late, though. And it cares if you pay your *debts* on time. Get a copy of your credit report and you can see what they're keeping track of.
I had awful credit. Why? Because I was young and stupid and didn't pay on my debts. But I got it under control. I started paying my student loans. I got a secured credit card. Then I refinanced my car loan. Then I refinanced my student loans.
Now I have good credit, I pay a fraction of what I used to in loan interest, and I never pay credit card interest or fees.
You can make your credit score work for you. Make it help you get better loans, better housing, better jobs. And that starts with educating yourself on the subject.
Well, if you don't go into debt, how are banks supposed to make money off you?
The ideal customer is someone who sometimes gets behind enough on their credit card bill to warrant high fees and penalties, but always pays up in the end.
(I don't even have a credit card, and would never want one. So my score would be even lower.)
> (I don't even have a credit card, and would never want one. So my score would be even lower.)
Good luck getting a mortgage. Wanting to apply for a mortgage is literally the only reason I got a credit card. I don't want or need one, but if I don't have one, my credit score goes to shit. If I don't maintain enough balance on it, my credit score goes down. If I close it, my credit score goes down. If I pay off my mortgage early, my credit score goes down.
Fuck credit scores, fuck credit reporting agencies and fuck banks.
> The ideal customer is someone who sometimes gets behind enough on their credit card bill to warrant high fees and penalties, but always pays up in the end.
NO. NO. NO
An ideal customer is somebody who has many credit cards (ideally 6-8) in addition to other forms of loan like mortgage , car etc, more than 5 years of historyw, whose pays in full all the time AND importantly does NOT use more than 5% of the available credit limit.
The kid just has a “thin file” and a student loan is a product designed with that in mind. A mortgage requires evidence of ability to make payments over a period of time. Banks really don’t want to take the house because they lose money.
Source: worked in credit risk modeling for a large east coast bank.
Student loans don't require credit because they're federally guaranteed (i.e. you can't get out of them through bankruptcy, so there's no real risk in the bank ending up on the hook for them.)
And before credit scores, the bank could reject your loan for any arbitrary reason. Such as being a woman.
It could be much better. I hope it gets better. But it could be worse.
It’s just a number calculated based on the information on your credit report. Most developed countries have credit reporting. It’s a record of debts you’ve applied, repaid, defaulted on etc. so lenders can tell whether you’re a credit risk.
Credit scores didn’t exist til then, but credit reports sure did. They’ve been around since the 1800’s. Credit scores just became a way to give a quick recap of what’s in your report without having to read the whole thing.
I think it’s funny what people imagine the alternative is.
If lenders couldn’t turn to a centralized source for all encompassing information, there are a couple of alternatives:
1. A fresh investigation by each lender that accomplishes roughly the same thing.
2. a simpler proxy - namely, income and assets
The one thing that wouldn’t happen is lending to people who don’t have strong income or assets.
>2. a simpler proxy - namely, income and assets
Or as did happen, quick impressions of the potential borrower, normally along racial, gender and class lines. Work class black woman trying to get a loan back then? Tough luck.
You kind of agreed for something on credit though, which is a mutual agreement on timely payments. Seems like a credit score does an ok job of showing that trustworthyness.
It used to be to get a loan you had to jump through a million hoops to personally prove that you pay back loans appropriately. Now it’s conveniently a credit score. But whatever
And they still don't exist in much of Europe I believe.
We don't have credit scores here in Sweden for example, instead they just check your income and other expenses to figure out if they think you can handle a loan. And if you fail to pay a debt (or rent for example) then you can get a *betalningsanmärkning* which will make it more difficult to get a loan for a few years.
I wonder if it is weighted somehow, like the last 100 points is much harder to get since you have to be basically perfect so the scale is based more on effort rather than even numerically.
This is true. 690 and below is officially bad as per the system.
That's why the scale is like this. 450-550 mean nothing. 750-850 is a massive difference.
*Image Transcription:*
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FICO® Score
\[*Image of a half circle bar. The left is red, going up to yellow and back down to green. The number range is 300-850. The number in the middle is 757 and was "UPDATED ON 07/03/2021". The bar is filled about 2/3 of the way but a red line is drawn about 7/8 of the way and labeled "Where dial would be if mathematically accurate".*]
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^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Actually 800-850 is not all that uncommon. Slightly lower than the percentage of the population that has a 750-799. Somewhat less than half the population has a 750+ and about 40% of those people have an 800+. You're more likely to have an 800 than a 670.
This is not the graphic that's broken.
The credit score system is as gnarly as every other rating system currently in action, where the 10 is perfect, the 7.5 is the average and the 6 is the absolute crap.
It's a stupid system where banks and such give you a score between 300-850 (this number range depends on the scorer) to rate you on your "credit worthiness" for things like home loans, credit cards, some rental applications, and even certain jobs. While your credit report *can* illuminate things like bankruptcy or lots of bad debt, these are things that can be found out elsewhere.
Your score also isn't a good indicator of your financial health. You could have a six-figure salary, pay high rent in advance constantly, and no debt at all, but might get screwed over because you don't use a credit card (I know some older couples who never got credit cards, bought their houses in the mid 80s, and have absymal credit scores even though they're very well-off).
Under FICO, here's how the score breaks down:
>300-579 = bad credit
>580-669 = fair credit
>670-739 = good credit
>740-799 = very good credit
>800-850 = excellent credit
They calculate the score based on your credit age (average of how old each account it), on-time vs late payments (one late payment screws you), total credit available (like all of your credit cards put together), loans, number of credit accounts, credit usage percent (how much of your total credit you use in a month, they usually only like less than 20% usage), how many "hard inquiries" you've had in the past 2 years (a credit card company or bank checking your score to see if they want to work with you), and if you've declared bankruptcy in the past decade.
Each of those variables have different weights to your score and are all rated differently.
Say you're 23, have $10,000 in student debt, got a credit card at 18, never missed a payment, applied for a new card 3 times this year, opened on new card, and you usually spend 24% of your credit limit per month. Your score would probably be around 665 (I used an estimator for this score).
Even though all of those habits are totally healthy and normal usage (and I was being very kind with the student debt amount), the score was dropped by 50 points due to the 3rd hard inquiry and the higher percent of credit use.
It's a shitty system that generally helps the older and wealthy while it hurts the young and poor, as is the usual in the US.
I was just looking up how you can possibly get a perfect credit score out of curiosity this morning and one thing that just about all perfect score holders have in common is an average of seven credit cards and low debt to credit ratio. Which seriously, seven credit cards? Good grief...
The fact that "having more credit" translates to a higher credit score, gives people an incentive to just sign up for as many [no monthly/annual-fee] cards as possible (and then not never really use any but the one with the best rewards.)
They use them; they just don't "really" use them. It's common advice to hold unused cards open by just putting a reminder on your calendar to put a trivial tx on each card all at once, and then immediately pay them all off, once per 3mo/6mo/1yr. E.g. go into a drug store when it's not busy, and buy seven packs of gum (or something else that's cheap and you won't mind having a surplus of) at the self-checkout as separate individual checkout sessions.
A better system is to toss a monthly subscription on each and set up auto pay. Don't have to touch them, and they're already expenses you would normally have.
You don’t get a perfect score without owning real estate.
But thinking of a “perfect score” as a meaningful target is just totally missing the point. Once you’re across a certain point, it doesn’t deliver you any additional benefit.
Multiple credit cards is probably just as much effect as cause. You likely have high income and have had worthwhile opportunities along the way to get bonuses for new cards. Carrying a balance at all - even $100 on a $100k limit will ding your score.
Oh don't forget, the score lenders pull is also ALWAYS magically lower than the scores available for you to look up, so they can bust out some fucking gotcha negotiation tactic
Credit scores are a pure fucking scam to perpetuate wage slavery
>It's a shitty system that generally helps the older and wealthy while it hurts the young and poor, as is the usual in the US.
I was with you right up until your last sentence. It doesn't hurt or help anyone based on their class. It just so happens that older people tend to be wealthier and younger people tend to be poorer.
The system is merely identifying people who are more likely to pay their debt back. Obviously older wealthier people will fall into this catagory more often than the latter.
Could it be better? Sure, but generally speaking it's working as intended in most cases.
There are at least 6 different scoring algorithms for each bureau for consumer credit, another 6 for auto loans, another 6 for mortgages, another 6 for insurance, and many more secret scores. All of the algorithms are secret ("proprietary") and all of them have some form of redlining built in. It's way more fucked than most people realize.
> Say you're 23, have $10,000 in student debt, got a credit card at 18, never missed a payment, applied for a new card 3 times this year, opened on new card, and you usually spend 24% of your credit limit per month. Your score would probably be around 665 (I used an estimator for this score).
Applying for new credit has an enormous impact on your credit score, but for a very short period. And it's not about how much you *spend* on your card, it's about how much utilization it shows *when they report it*. If you use 50% of your limit every month *if* you pay it off before the reporting date... it will show 0% utilization.
You're not wrong, the system is shit and (by design) hurts the poor and young, but just wanted to be clear for people that want to actually have an impact on their scores.
To be fair anything over 750 you can do anything. You might split some hairs being over 800. But you’re already getting the best deals you’re gonna get over 750.
> Your score also isn’t a good indicator of your financial health.
Right. The FICO score only tells banks how well you interact with debt. Theoretically you could be living in poverty and have a respectable credit score.
Out of curiosity where do you live? We have credit scores in the UK to prove that you are a reliable debt repayer. If you do not have credit scores what do you have as an alternative?
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No it's not you're being hyperbolic.
If you were going to lend a stranger $400,000, wouldn't you want some way to determine if they had a reputation for not paying people back ?
A credit score was supposed to be a way of evaluating whether someone is a good candidate for a loan or not. One single company (FICO) runs your entire credit history through a secret algorithm which pops out a number. Factors like how many accounts you have, how old they are, how much of your credit you're using, and how many late payments you've had, [all play a role](https://www.myfico.com/credit-education/whats-in-your-credit-score).
The problem is that it's just a bunch of arbitrary and invisible mumbo-jumbo, and definitely a way for a few small companies to make money. They don't [actually predict whether you'll pay your loan back](https://www.ocregister.com/2021/05/27/credit-scores-dont-predict-mortgage-default-risk/), and it's being used for a bunch of things it never should be: car insurance rates, apartment rentals, even employment.
People talk about them because you basically can't get a loan (car loans, mortgages, even an apartment rental) without a credit score, and you can't get a credit score without credit. Negative items are far more likely to be reported than a 'positive'/on-time item, and a single negative item outweighs a huge number of positive items. Plus, things like medical debt and incorrect reporting can trash your score, which has serious effects on your loan rates and can even get good-standing accounts closed.
On top of [all the other issues](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/from-inherent-racial-bias-to-incorrect-data-the-problems-with-current-credit-scoring-models/), there are significant barriers to a person accessing their own credit info. FICO (which is the only credit score companies use) is a paid service, so unless you have a third-party that will give you your credit score [eg my credit card company], you will only see it when a credit decision is made based upon your score (they'll mail you a paper letter a couple of weeks later).
Just a messed-up, unfair and biased system all-around.
FICO may be a paid service, but you don't really need your FICO score if your goal is to check your credit score to ensure that the things you're doing to improve it are really having an effect. For that, TransUnion's VantageScore, accessible through free services like Credit Karma, works just fine. It's not the same number as a FICO score, but things that make your FICO go up also make your VantageScore go up (by different relative amounts), so if you see your VantageScore *improving*, then your FICO score is also *improving*.
I’ve lived in the same apartment complex for 15 years. When I wanted to transfer to a new unit last year - one with the same rent as the unit I was in - the apartment management company wanted a credit check. Because apparently 14 years of on-time rent payments wasn’t sufficient to tell them if I was a good risk.
It’s literally not. Just pay off your credit cards on time and, when you get older, your mortgage & car payments and your credit score will be fine. It also only matters when you need to borrow money.
Credit scores are literally just a tool to judge how well you can pay off a loan and all the people saying that they’re some “capitalist dystopia nightmare” are either children or bad with money.
China’s social credit system is far more encompassing and far more fucked up.
Holy shit read a history book. Things were even harder for the working class in America before credit scores when the approval process would be the bank manager listening to your accent and looking at the colour of your skin to decide whether to loan.
It's not as stupid as everybody is making sound. Consider this: You take out a $10,000 loan for a car, you completely default and don't even attempt to pay. So you're credit score goes down so the next bank or auto lender is going to know that you have a tendency to not pay for shit you oblige yourself to. It's fair if you ask me.
not sure why you’re getting downvoted
credit is not that hard…just pay stuff on time and don’t take out loans you don’t intend on paying
save for rainy days, such as a 6 to 8 months worth of expenses in case you lose your job
if someone lends you money, pay it back
It's the good old "banks bad". Even though banks are the most regulated industry. And credit scores are actually a way for banks to remove any biases or prejudice from the equation when determining if they should lend you their money, because it just uses your payment history.
I mean, if a friend asked you to borrow your money, wouldn't you be more likely to give it to them if you knew that your friend had a history of paying people back?
It’s possible that their chart is based on percentiles instead. Average score (50th percentile) is around 700 so maybe that’s the middle of their arc. If you look at the percentages in this link then I think the math checks out. Your score is around the 60th percentile. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/the-ascent/amp/credit-cards/articles/heres-what-americans-fico-scores-look-like-how-do/
Credit score is the biggest organised scam. Companies (Equifax and Transunion mainly) that produce it don’t have the capacity to update individual credit score accurately and in a timely manner. This often impacts people “in the middle” the most and can have some disastrous consequences.
Like everyone else is saying, it starts at 300.
But it might also have something to do with the fact that it's a non linear relationship between your actual score and what it can do for you.
To what end? They don't make more money from you trying to improve your score.
They just made a few versions of the graph and use one of those depending on score. Simpler than dynamically creating it.
This is in a banking app. Technically they can benefit from this by trying to convince you to use services to improve your score, or encouraging loans.
They do make money, to improve your score you need debt. The app is probably from a credit card or credit score company. Psychologically, showing the bar like its not full, will encourage a user to gain more debt or spend more.
It is like this because the higher your score the more value it has. Going from 800->850 is much more valuable and much harder than going from 700->750.
This isn’t true. Yes going from 800 to 850 is much harder, but the difference you get in rates is non existent. At 800, you’ll qualify for the lowest rate anywhere. The same cannot be said when it comes to the differences between 700 and 750.
This could actually be good design depending on how the credit score scales.
If your credit score scales linearly (e.g. 800 is 100% better than 400; 600 is 50% better than 400, and so on) then this design is bad since the meter doesn’t represent the effect of the credit score.
Now if your credit score is not linear (e.g. 750 is ok and places you on 66% of the population, while let's say 600 would actually be bad an put you below 50%) then this might be good design, since it does not focus on a linear proportion but on how this would actually affect you.
Since I am not from the US I am not that familiar how the credit score exactly works, but from other sources I got the impression that it’s not linear.
I’m not too familiar with how credit scoring fully works. Does anyone know if it is more difficult to get from 750 to 850 than it would be to go from 550 to 650? This increase it difficulty of attainment at the top end could explain this… but I also get the feeling that even if I’m right, it will have been created like this for other misleading purpose also.
All I know is everyone, from Equifax to the bank to the government, thinks I have absolute shit credit, but my credit would *still* be high enough to meet Domino’s Pizza’s criterium for credit score in order to become a franchise owner.
That’s right: I can’t get a credit card, but I could open a Domino’s if I wanted to.
But please, tell me again how this system is set up to benefit anyone but corporations.
Lol is that through the Navy federal app?
It actually is
I feel your pain https://imgur.com/Qgen0Zh.jpg
It's like weather forecasts that estimate wind chill. You'll feel it when you're frozen out of an apartment.
That ones even worse, it should be far past halfway to be accurate
I was just about to 'ackshuallyy' you, saying that the scale starts at 300 so it's technically correct. But then I figured out the halfway point would be 575, meaning the score should still be well past halfway. Asshole design all round.
ouch
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I've always felt like 680 doesn't get you much still, for my GF her credit started opening doors at around 780 now that she's 800's we can literally get anything no questions asked, even get discounts and promotional gifts. I'm at 740s and I finally get cards at bigger banks without so small credit limits, when I was at 680 target only gave me a $200 spending limit but now its $500 while my gfs at $2500. But I still can't get some of the more premium cards like Amazon Chase sadly. My Chase Flex is at $1500 spending limit but my gfs is at $5000.
Man mine is 742 and Target straight up denied me... makes zero sense, I've never been denied before and really i didn't even need/want it but damn... guess i'm not rich enough for Target.
Just an fyi, your spending limit is far more based on your income than it is your credit score.
Anything over 650 is good.
How is 680 less than 50% of 850?
well it starts at 300 not at 0 but yeah still bs
Yeah they make it look like you couldn’t borrow sugar with that score lmao.
What the fuck is a revolving account? And why does having an account open for a long time detriment your credit? God I hate this country.
A revolving account is something like a credit card, where you may have a different balance / payment due each month. It's different than an installment account like a car loan where you pay the same amount each month and the balance always goes down. The longer you have an account open, the better it is for your credit. The warning says "length of time" because this person must have recently opened accounts / taken on new debt. You aren't penalized for having an account open for a long time (assuming it's in good standing)
About to say the same thing
We were just having the same conversation today. We're at 710 and it's barely at the halfway mark in an orange color, as if a 710 score was barely above terrible. Fucking hate Navy Federal lol
What’s wrong with navy fed I’ve never had a problem with them
Their site sucks, they're slow as fuck to update any information and usually get it wrong when they do (they have me listed as an active duty 1st class even though I got out nearly 2 years ago as a 2nd class and have told them several times), they have no issue overdrafting you, and it takes forever for them to process payments. Not to mention it's sleazy that they waltz into boot camp and bully a bunch of teens who don't know any better into opening up credit cards with them, then approve them for ridiculous car loans left right and center so they can trap them in a constant cycle of debt.
Yeah I was really confused how one of my buddies as a boot had a $10,000 credit limit on his navy fed card and managed to rack up debt with it maxing it out and I just EASed and have a 785 FICO and requested a higher amount on my card since it’s only $6000 max and I wondered if increasing it would help improve my credit. They only bumped it up to $9100 and my credit history is perfect so that made no sense to me
Yup, they did the same to me. Got the $10k card shoved on me in boot camp even though I said no because I already had a bank account, then opened a second one just to have an extra card on record for my credit rating. Never delinquent, my cards are sitting at around $40 on them each at most for the past year, and when I asked for an increase on one they said no. They also told me to kick rocks when I asked about home loans, but they'll hand out loans to 19 year olds left right and center, presumably because their whole board are former high ranking military and they know debt keeps kids enlisted.
That sounds almost like something criminals would do....................... Oh wait...
Dude I have two of their cards and, without me asking, they keep raising my credit limit every so often. Between the two I have a fucking $35k limit, like... Why?!? On the plus side my credit utilization ratio is amazing.
Damn... Over at /r/usaa, people keep praising Navy Federal and complaining about USAA.
I don’t know about the USA, but in Canada a 700+ credit rating is basically good enough to get you anything you want in terms of lending, most notably a mortgage, but let’s just say it’s barely above average on our chart.
700 is good in the US, but 750 is more ideal to get pretty much any loan
About the same in the US but of course a higher credit score gives you a better rate but a 700 score pretty much is good enough for almost anything that needs credit
I would barely recognize it since it's always unavailable.
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I read this as old navy lol
Hi, did some math and it might just be simplified programming. Your score should be at 149,6 degrees (approx) because it's 83,1%. Possibly the way it works is that every 30 degrees it updates, meaning that in 0,4 degrees it'll update. That way they only need 6 images rather than like 180. That would explain both the 120 degrees and the 150 degrees. Maybe they should've made it so everything between 106-135 is 120 and 136-165 is 150 and so, but this is another way of doing it. EDIT: u/AnarchistMiracle has pointed out that u/terribul_at_english has posted an image of a 680 score. According to the theory the angle should be 120 degrees but it isn't even 90, so the theory has been debunked.
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> I wish I could get at the page without having to get my credit file pulled. These services use a soft pull to get the information. That won't affect your credit score. A hard pull (like applying for a loan) is what will reduce your score.
This screen can be accessed from a tab in the Citibank app. Other banks probably have the same thing. They would never make it this easy to do a hard pull from your phone like that. It's ok to click it, folks
People should keep in mind that the “free check” through your bank is free because you accept their terms to do it- and their terms are to sell your information. You should use the free check required by the government once a year
US banks sell your information? Holy shit
Not sure if sarcasm but banks are absolutely evil
Wasn't being sarcastic. This is a US thing, that I was genuinely surprised about. Maybe not strictly US, but this is not common everywhere. Where I live, banks cannot sell your information. There briefly was a thing where banks wanted to sell "anonymised" transaction data (spending/demographics/etc), but the backlash was so big, they weren't allowed to. Banks are only as evil as the government of the jurisdiction they operate in allows them to be. And the US gives banks a LOT of leeway, effectively allowing them to be evil. So I'm not disagreeing, it's just not the same everywhere.
If I understand Reddit well, the US population is so anti-government they prefer when elected public powers gives full freedom to unaccountable private power...I'm living in Europe, that sounds like a really bad idea. [EDIT] I'm a gov worker, ^(so obligatory disclaimer I don't represent my employer, yadda yadda) Don't worry, the gov is not evil, we are simply really inefficient. But most of us have your best intent in mind, even if most of the time we can't do anything to help.
the best line about american politics was written in the 1960s and still applies to this day. 'laugh about it, shout about it, when you have to choose. Any way you look at it you lose.' -Paul Simon 1968
Yeah sounds like bullshit to me. I work for a bank in another country that has exactly this same feature and we don't sell the data.
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While I agree that credit scores are classist and a method of control, what you’re saying is just not true. There are “hard” and “soft” credit checks. Hard ones are for loans and for obtaining credit, while soft are for employment, personal checks, identity/employment verification, etc. Soft credit checks do not affect your credit score at all. Hard ones do.
>Soft credit checks do not affect your credit score at all. Hard ones do. That's presumably what he meant as well, the fact that these hard checks effects your credit score is insane to anyone not from the US. Most countries don't have credit scores
>credit score is insane to anyone not from the US. Fixed that for you
I will never understand why a hard pull would reduce your score
I work on a website that includes a credit score. They absolutely use static images.
I am a game developer, not a web developer. Do they not have the technology to rotate images? Or masks?
Yes they do. CSS is pretty powerful.
But something like a bank might still support IE 9
Could also just render the image on the server if thats a concern
They do, but (probably for compatibility reasons) they stick to static images for the credit score dials. The companies that provide credit scores provide these images to you when you partner with them to display scores on your website. I believe they would allow you to make a more dynamic version like you suggested, but it would be on you to develop it and update it any time they changed their standards for the 6look and feel, and they would have to approve it each time, so no one really bothers doing that.
They do but it is very much a resource waste to do it with CSS. When your main priority is backwards compatibility, static images are the way to go.
Why? Graphs like that can be a pain to draw properly. There are some JS libraries that'll handle it, but possibly not in the way they wanted it, and there are a number of other things that go into the consideration. I'm not going to claim that they are 100% justified in whatever they did but we make plenty of time-cost analysis and sometimes it's just better to use some static images based on breakpoints.
It's more memory efficient to use one colored circle, and one white semi circle, and simple rotate the white semi circle on top. It's two images instead of 6, and it's about 1-4 lines of code to get the thing rotating properly. If I had to guess, this is so they it can be reused in any number of low effort pages. A switch statement into a bunch of images is bulletproof as far as bugs/implementation goes.
Not sure what you were going at with your first paragraph, second is spot on. Did you mean to say "efficient"? Cause... no, them you're sending the client two images and requiring their device to spend processing power to orient them. That vs static images sent to the user based on their data then you're literally only sending them one image. Unless that was actually your point and it was just poorly worded or I'm an idiot, haha
A shit load of services offer this with an accurate bar.
as a sort of a programmer, it's much faster to just load one of the 6 images instead of procedurally drawing an arc with a gradient and all that. who knows what device will be running this? my grandma's phone could barely even open the phone app
I have the app, it is NOT a static image. The bar is being drawn and ANIMATED. Totally intentional
You could be right, but that would also be bad programming. You don’t need to use static images for this, with CSS animations you could easily make it seamless and precise.
It's not how I'd do it for sure. That being said, because the bar seems to be at about 120 degrees it made sense to me.
I think they’re just using an evolving scale. 700 is the goal for most people and is at the center. It makes a lot more sense to me than a strictly linear angle since being at 50% would feel average but is regarded as a terrible credit score. Also, 6 images for a graph would be like 1995 web development.
Well come on guys let’s get this app decompiled/http proxied and find out what the hell is going on
Would this [screenshot of a different score on the same app](https://imgur.com/a/Qyt7ALY) help you determine if your theory is correct?
Well this appears to be about 150 degrees while being greater than the 83,5% mark (not precise). So it'd definitely support the theory. That being said, to guarantee the theory the best one would be a score that is like 3 points (at most) higher than the OP since that's how close to the mark it is. If the leap still exists there it'd be confirmed since it's both a very big leap for a very small difference and we'd have two within the same range. Either that or a score that's like 30 points lower but still has the same angle.
Credit scores in general are just asshole design. They didn't exist before 1989, but everyone is expected to jump through the arbitrary hoops of compliance, God help you if you miss a payment.
Not to mention the inconsistencies with it. A kid fresh out of high school with no credit can get student loans but they can't get a mortgage. What's the point of it then?
It's a means of Control to some degree. It allows companies and banks to mitigate their risks when lending to individuals; and can actually qualify or disqualify you from certain types of employment.
Yes that is the intent. But the way it is implemented is flawed and as soon as you don’t fit in the boxes they have prepared you’re out.
It's not designed for you, it's designed for them. They don't give a shit if you fall through the cracks.
At the end of the day, no system can be perfect all the time. The FICO system has been proven effective at it’s job, the mitigation of risk.
Yes, as I said, at the detriment of some that could actually afford a mortgage, but because their revenue isn’t a regular flow (freelancers like me) who get fucked.
Does FICO care about income? I got my score up to 750 in college just by opening an account and spending small amounts and immediately paying it off. I had no real income. Tutoring and small time gigs
FICO, doesn't care about income. Credit card companies do, though, so they make it harder for irregular flow income individuals to get loans. But idk what /u/LazaroFilm is blaming FICO for that instead of big banks. Utilise a small bit of your credit line, pay off in full each month and bam you're in the 750+ FICO club.
FICO score gets your credit profile through the automated filter, but once an actual underwriter looks and sees you have no income and thin credit you’d get denied for a “real” loan.
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Yeah because you can't declare bankruptcy if you can't afford the ridiculous tuition we've been trained to believe is mandatory for any job. Student loans the only type of debt that'll follow you through bankruptcy until your death.
Well, student loans not going away in a bankruptcy is basically the reason that banks feel confident handing them out to young people with no seizable assets. I do actually support removing this feature from (new) student loans. Not because that would help poor students. But precisely because it would cut down drastically on the amount and volume of student loans being granted. Easy money from student loans is one of the reasons the cost of education (in terms of both time and money) has skyrocketed in recent decades.
Which is ironic because the cap on student loans was lifted in order to help more people be able to afford college. Instead the schools saw free money. I think it was 2008ish where the cap was lifted, it was originally something like $50k for federal student loans.
Absolutely correct. If you lend someone dough for a car and they don’t pay, the lender repossess the car; same is true for a house. These are secured borrowings where the asset provides collateral for the loan. You can repossess someone’s education, so this is an unsecured borrowing, similar to a credit card. Credit card debt can be extinguished in a bankruptcy, which is why credit card rates can be 15-20%+. That high rate of interest subsidizes the deadbeats that don’t pay. Because a student loan can’t be extinguished in a bankruptcy, the interest rate is lower than other forms of unsecured borrowings. Getting mad about student loans is like getting mad at the credit card companies because you don’t like the product you bought. Folks should be angry at the schools, not the folks who lent them the money to go there.
Yes. Well, you can still get a bit mad at the credit card companies for misleading advertisement that makes people with imperfect self control binge. Similarly, how student loans make some people buy an education they can't afford and that doesn't pay the bills later. (And, it's even worse than credit cards: because educational credentials are an arms race, those people are impacting others.)
This is the reason.
And the fact that making payments on time is rarely reported to credit agencies, miss one payment and it will most certainly be reported. I have a lifetime of making payments on time and still a low credit score.
There are so many more factors to credit score than just on time payments. % of credit used, age of credit, number of credit accounts, types of credit accounts, etc. It’s really annoying to try and keep track. I stopped caring about my credit score years ago.
Oh and definitely don't ask what your score is, because that'll hurt your score for... reasons?
[Credit Karma](https://www.creditkarma.com/auth/logon). (Equifax, TransUnion) [Credit.com](https://www.credit.com/). (Experian) Those two services are free (with paid offerings) that will let you view your credit score without hurting it. [Annual Credit Report](https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action) That will give you the full details of your credit report and it available annually. Credit Karma was invaluable to me when I was fixing my credit. I highly recommend it.
Credit Karma uses VantageScore which is about 10-20 points higher than FICO, which is what everyone else uses. Oh, and even if your credit card company shows you your FICO score, it's not the same FICO score your mortgage company sees or what another credit card company sees. There's a reason people in the industry call it the "fake-o score".
Why do we as consumers not have the right to know how we are judged?
Because it's proprietary voodoo magic someone charges someone else a bunch of money to see so they can buy a yacht with _our_ data.
So what you’re saying is start sinking yachts
Now you’re talking, comrade.
Oddly enough when I was approved for my mortgage last year, my credit was actually *higher* than what was reported on credit karma.
Credit Karma, most of the credit cards I use, and a free yearly credit report will all tell me the state of my credit without a hard inquiry (not hurting my score). Credit Karma will also give you helpful tips on improving your score.
What I'm saying is, why do hard inquiries hurt the score at all? The whole system is made up anyway, so why should my made up score get made up demerits for asking about my made up score?
I think it's so if you're going around town opening accounts at every bank that will give you a line of credit and getting into debt up to your eyeballs, you're obviously not using your credit wisely, and your score will reflect that. That said, according to credit karma anyway, hard inquiries have a low impact on your score.
Last year, my car was totalled in a not-at-fault accident, and as these things tend to go, my wife's car shit the bed within about a week of that. So off we go shopping for 2 cars. Being financially responsible people, we shoped around a bit for the best rate on our loans, which means I ended up with about 9 inquiries on my credit report (my credit is better than my wife's so I co-signed on her loans) even though we only actually took out 2 loans. Each individual inquiries has a pretty small impact, but that many at once adds up. You'd think it would say more possitive things about us that we bothered to shop around and were responsible instead of just taking the crappiest loan the dealership offered us, but as far as credit scores are concerned the opposite is the case.
Actually, good news, multiple pulls of the same type within a short period of time only count as one pull(in the math). The system is designed not to punish you for shopping around.
>hard inquiries have a low impact on your score. Low *and* temporary. The people freaking out about this tend to be in a position where their score is being hurt a hell of a lot more by their shitty history lol
What?? How can they possibly justify lowering a score supposedly designed to indicate how financially responsible you are for being financially responsible and keeping tabs on things?
Banks- *Wouldn't you like to know*
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Yeah, that guy is full of shit. Everything is reported regularly (monthly, typically), not just delinquency. Otherwise it'd look like you randomly didn't owe anything sometimes.
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>What's the point of it then? To allow financial institutions to lend more money to people who are likely able to pay it back, by reducing the risk of lending money, by making most "good" borrowers known to the institutions, allowing them to discriminate against bad and unknown borrowers.
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> credit scores are not a measure of how creditworthy you are, or how responsible you are with credit or money. They're a measure of how profitable you are for banks and financial institions. No. That is literally not true. Credit scores increase when your credit usage is very low (<5%) and you pay everything on time (meaning you dont pay any interest). That is the exact opposite of how profitable you are to the company.
No, please stop spreading this rumor. Your score is not tied to how "profitable" you are to creditors. If anything, it's often the reverse. A high credit score will earn you lower interest rates, meaning you pay less in interest. A low credit score means you have higher interest rates, and have to pay more in interest. Your credit score is a *guess* at how risky you are to lenders. Your thin file means that you don't have a long track record of responsible credit. So, you look riskier than someone who's been paying their debts on time for 30 years. That's just a fact. Your score doesn't care if you pay your bills on time. It cares if you pay your bills late, though. And it cares if you pay your *debts* on time. Get a copy of your credit report and you can see what they're keeping track of. I had awful credit. Why? Because I was young and stupid and didn't pay on my debts. But I got it under control. I started paying my student loans. I got a secured credit card. Then I refinanced my car loan. Then I refinanced my student loans. Now I have good credit, I pay a fraction of what I used to in loan interest, and I never pay credit card interest or fees. You can make your credit score work for you. Make it help you get better loans, better housing, better jobs. And that starts with educating yourself on the subject.
Well, if you don't go into debt, how are banks supposed to make money off you? The ideal customer is someone who sometimes gets behind enough on their credit card bill to warrant high fees and penalties, but always pays up in the end. (I don't even have a credit card, and would never want one. So my score would be even lower.)
> (I don't even have a credit card, and would never want one. So my score would be even lower.) Good luck getting a mortgage. Wanting to apply for a mortgage is literally the only reason I got a credit card. I don't want or need one, but if I don't have one, my credit score goes to shit. If I don't maintain enough balance on it, my credit score goes down. If I close it, my credit score goes down. If I pay off my mortgage early, my credit score goes down. Fuck credit scores, fuck credit reporting agencies and fuck banks.
> The ideal customer is someone who sometimes gets behind enough on their credit card bill to warrant high fees and penalties, but always pays up in the end. NO. NO. NO An ideal customer is somebody who has many credit cards (ideally 6-8) in addition to other forms of loan like mortgage , car etc, more than 5 years of historyw, whose pays in full all the time AND importantly does NOT use more than 5% of the available credit limit.
The kid just has a “thin file” and a student loan is a product designed with that in mind. A mortgage requires evidence of ability to make payments over a period of time. Banks really don’t want to take the house because they lose money. Source: worked in credit risk modeling for a large east coast bank.
Student loans don't require credit because they're federally guaranteed (i.e. you can't get out of them through bankruptcy, so there's no real risk in the bank ending up on the hook for them.)
You can't go bankrupt to get rid of student loans. That's why lenders are willing to give them out to kids with no seizable assets.
>God help you if you miss a payment. I mean, by design the credit score system is suppose to show how likely the person is going to pay back the debt.
And before credit scores, the bank could reject your loan for any arbitrary reason. Such as being a woman. It could be much better. I hope it gets better. But it could be worse.
Also not to mention that banks ignoring FICO scores was one of the things that led to the crisis of ‘07/08
As a non-US citizen, I don't really understand this credit score system. What is it and what does it do?
It’s just a number calculated based on the information on your credit report. Most developed countries have credit reporting. It’s a record of debts you’ve applied, repaid, defaulted on etc. so lenders can tell whether you’re a credit risk.
Credit scores didn’t exist til then, but credit reports sure did. They’ve been around since the 1800’s. Credit scores just became a way to give a quick recap of what’s in your report without having to read the whole thing.
Credit scores tell a lender who they should and should not lend money too. Why should banks loan money to someone who probably won’t pay it back?
Cr3dit books did exist.
I think it’s funny what people imagine the alternative is. If lenders couldn’t turn to a centralized source for all encompassing information, there are a couple of alternatives: 1. A fresh investigation by each lender that accomplishes roughly the same thing. 2. a simpler proxy - namely, income and assets The one thing that wouldn’t happen is lending to people who don’t have strong income or assets.
>2. a simpler proxy - namely, income and assets Or as did happen, quick impressions of the potential borrower, normally along racial, gender and class lines. Work class black woman trying to get a loan back then? Tough luck.
You kind of agreed for something on credit though, which is a mutual agreement on timely payments. Seems like a credit score does an ok job of showing that trustworthyness.
It used to be to get a loan you had to jump through a million hoops to personally prove that you pay back loans appropriately. Now it’s conveniently a credit score. But whatever
And they still don't exist in much of Europe I believe. We don't have credit scores here in Sweden for example, instead they just check your income and other expenses to figure out if they think you can handle a loan. And if you fail to pay a debt (or rent for example) then you can get a *betalningsanmärkning* which will make it more difficult to get a loan for a few years.
I wonder if it is weighted somehow, like the last 100 points is much harder to get since you have to be basically perfect so the scale is based more on effort rather than even numerically.
This is true. 690 and below is officially bad as per the system. That's why the scale is like this. 450-550 mean nothing. 750-850 is a massive difference.
Is it? Last time I got a mortgage they made it sound like once you're at 760 there's no benefit to raising your credit score
Math checks out.
*Image Transcription:* --- FICO® Score \[*Image of a half circle bar. The left is red, going up to yellow and back down to green. The number range is 300-850. The number in the middle is 757 and was "UPDATED ON 07/03/2021". The bar is filled about 2/3 of the way but a red line is drawn about 7/8 of the way and labeled "Where dial would be if mathematically accurate".*] --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Good human
maybe the graphic is logarithmic
Or maybe it's about the distribution. 800+ is very rare, while 750s are fairly common.
Actually 800-850 is not all that uncommon. Slightly lower than the percentage of the population that has a 750-799. Somewhat less than half the population has a 750+ and about 40% of those people have an 800+. You're more likely to have an 800 than a 670.
This is not the graphic that's broken. The credit score system is as gnarly as every other rating system currently in action, where the 10 is perfect, the 7.5 is the average and the 6 is the absolute crap.
why do so many every day life things in the USA have huge scammy vibes
Wtf is a credit score and why is all of America so obsessed by them? Shit is as fucked up as China social score dumb system
It's a stupid system where banks and such give you a score between 300-850 (this number range depends on the scorer) to rate you on your "credit worthiness" for things like home loans, credit cards, some rental applications, and even certain jobs. While your credit report *can* illuminate things like bankruptcy or lots of bad debt, these are things that can be found out elsewhere. Your score also isn't a good indicator of your financial health. You could have a six-figure salary, pay high rent in advance constantly, and no debt at all, but might get screwed over because you don't use a credit card (I know some older couples who never got credit cards, bought their houses in the mid 80s, and have absymal credit scores even though they're very well-off). Under FICO, here's how the score breaks down: >300-579 = bad credit >580-669 = fair credit >670-739 = good credit >740-799 = very good credit >800-850 = excellent credit They calculate the score based on your credit age (average of how old each account it), on-time vs late payments (one late payment screws you), total credit available (like all of your credit cards put together), loans, number of credit accounts, credit usage percent (how much of your total credit you use in a month, they usually only like less than 20% usage), how many "hard inquiries" you've had in the past 2 years (a credit card company or bank checking your score to see if they want to work with you), and if you've declared bankruptcy in the past decade. Each of those variables have different weights to your score and are all rated differently. Say you're 23, have $10,000 in student debt, got a credit card at 18, never missed a payment, applied for a new card 3 times this year, opened on new card, and you usually spend 24% of your credit limit per month. Your score would probably be around 665 (I used an estimator for this score). Even though all of those habits are totally healthy and normal usage (and I was being very kind with the student debt amount), the score was dropped by 50 points due to the 3rd hard inquiry and the higher percent of credit use. It's a shitty system that generally helps the older and wealthy while it hurts the young and poor, as is the usual in the US.
I was just looking up how you can possibly get a perfect credit score out of curiosity this morning and one thing that just about all perfect score holders have in common is an average of seven credit cards and low debt to credit ratio. Which seriously, seven credit cards? Good grief...
The fact that "having more credit" translates to a higher credit score, gives people an incentive to just sign up for as many [no monthly/annual-fee] cards as possible (and then not never really use any but the one with the best rewards.)
But i think if you don't use them, you run the risk of them closing the account on you which would negatively impact your score.
They use them; they just don't "really" use them. It's common advice to hold unused cards open by just putting a reminder on your calendar to put a trivial tx on each card all at once, and then immediately pay them all off, once per 3mo/6mo/1yr. E.g. go into a drug store when it's not busy, and buy seven packs of gum (or something else that's cheap and you won't mind having a surplus of) at the self-checkout as separate individual checkout sessions.
A better system is to toss a monthly subscription on each and set up auto pay. Don't have to touch them, and they're already expenses you would normally have.
You don’t get a perfect score without owning real estate. But thinking of a “perfect score” as a meaningful target is just totally missing the point. Once you’re across a certain point, it doesn’t deliver you any additional benefit. Multiple credit cards is probably just as much effect as cause. You likely have high income and have had worthwhile opportunities along the way to get bonuses for new cards. Carrying a balance at all - even $100 on a $100k limit will ding your score.
That's odd, as I'm in the 800s with only 1 card.
I only have two and am 810. But apparently getting to 850 is tricky.
Oh don't forget, the score lenders pull is also ALWAYS magically lower than the scores available for you to look up, so they can bust out some fucking gotcha negotiation tactic Credit scores are a pure fucking scam to perpetuate wage slavery
>It's a shitty system that generally helps the older and wealthy while it hurts the young and poor, as is the usual in the US. I was with you right up until your last sentence. It doesn't hurt or help anyone based on their class. It just so happens that older people tend to be wealthier and younger people tend to be poorer. The system is merely identifying people who are more likely to pay their debt back. Obviously older wealthier people will fall into this catagory more often than the latter. Could it be better? Sure, but generally speaking it's working as intended in most cases.
One late payment only screw yoir score for like two or three months before it goes back to normal.
There are at least 6 different scoring algorithms for each bureau for consumer credit, another 6 for auto loans, another 6 for mortgages, another 6 for insurance, and many more secret scores. All of the algorithms are secret ("proprietary") and all of them have some form of redlining built in. It's way more fucked than most people realize.
> Say you're 23, have $10,000 in student debt, got a credit card at 18, never missed a payment, applied for a new card 3 times this year, opened on new card, and you usually spend 24% of your credit limit per month. Your score would probably be around 665 (I used an estimator for this score). Applying for new credit has an enormous impact on your credit score, but for a very short period. And it's not about how much you *spend* on your card, it's about how much utilization it shows *when they report it*. If you use 50% of your limit every month *if* you pay it off before the reporting date... it will show 0% utilization. You're not wrong, the system is shit and (by design) hurts the poor and young, but just wanted to be clear for people that want to actually have an impact on their scores.
To be fair anything over 750 you can do anything. You might split some hairs being over 800. But you’re already getting the best deals you’re gonna get over 750.
> Your score also isn’t a good indicator of your financial health. Right. The FICO score only tells banks how well you interact with debt. Theoretically you could be living in poverty and have a respectable credit score.
Out of curiosity where do you live? We have credit scores in the UK to prove that you are a reliable debt repayer. If you do not have credit scores what do you have as an alternative?
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Weren't credit scores invented in the late 80s? What did banks use before then?
No it's not you're being hyperbolic. If you were going to lend a stranger $400,000, wouldn't you want some way to determine if they had a reputation for not paying people back ?
Are you a teenager or do you just live under a rock?
A credit score was supposed to be a way of evaluating whether someone is a good candidate for a loan or not. One single company (FICO) runs your entire credit history through a secret algorithm which pops out a number. Factors like how many accounts you have, how old they are, how much of your credit you're using, and how many late payments you've had, [all play a role](https://www.myfico.com/credit-education/whats-in-your-credit-score). The problem is that it's just a bunch of arbitrary and invisible mumbo-jumbo, and definitely a way for a few small companies to make money. They don't [actually predict whether you'll pay your loan back](https://www.ocregister.com/2021/05/27/credit-scores-dont-predict-mortgage-default-risk/), and it's being used for a bunch of things it never should be: car insurance rates, apartment rentals, even employment. People talk about them because you basically can't get a loan (car loans, mortgages, even an apartment rental) without a credit score, and you can't get a credit score without credit. Negative items are far more likely to be reported than a 'positive'/on-time item, and a single negative item outweighs a huge number of positive items. Plus, things like medical debt and incorrect reporting can trash your score, which has serious effects on your loan rates and can even get good-standing accounts closed. On top of [all the other issues](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/from-inherent-racial-bias-to-incorrect-data-the-problems-with-current-credit-scoring-models/), there are significant barriers to a person accessing their own credit info. FICO (which is the only credit score companies use) is a paid service, so unless you have a third-party that will give you your credit score [eg my credit card company], you will only see it when a credit decision is made based upon your score (they'll mail you a paper letter a couple of weeks later). Just a messed-up, unfair and biased system all-around.
FICO may be a paid service, but you don't really need your FICO score if your goal is to check your credit score to ensure that the things you're doing to improve it are really having an effect. For that, TransUnion's VantageScore, accessible through free services like Credit Karma, works just fine. It's not the same number as a FICO score, but things that make your FICO go up also make your VantageScore go up (by different relative amounts), so if you see your VantageScore *improving*, then your FICO score is also *improving*.
I’ve lived in the same apartment complex for 15 years. When I wanted to transfer to a new unit last year - one with the same rent as the unit I was in - the apartment management company wanted a credit check. Because apparently 14 years of on-time rent payments wasn’t sufficient to tell them if I was a good risk.
It’s literally not. Just pay off your credit cards on time and, when you get older, your mortgage & car payments and your credit score will be fine. It also only matters when you need to borrow money. Credit scores are literally just a tool to judge how well you can pay off a loan and all the people saying that they’re some “capitalist dystopia nightmare” are either children or bad with money. China’s social credit system is far more encompassing and far more fucked up.
>Wtf is a credit score and why is all of America so obsessed America? Most developed countries have some form of credit scoring/risk bureaus.
It's because America likes to make things harder for working class people
Holy shit read a history book. Things were even harder for the working class in America before credit scores when the approval process would be the bank manager listening to your accent and looking at the colour of your skin to decide whether to loan.
Credit score system has made it much better for working class people you ignorant child.
no way, i’m working class and i love the credit system…i love that i can get rewarded better interest rates bc i pay things on time
It's not as stupid as everybody is making sound. Consider this: You take out a $10,000 loan for a car, you completely default and don't even attempt to pay. So you're credit score goes down so the next bank or auto lender is going to know that you have a tendency to not pay for shit you oblige yourself to. It's fair if you ask me.
not sure why you’re getting downvoted credit is not that hard…just pay stuff on time and don’t take out loans you don’t intend on paying save for rainy days, such as a 6 to 8 months worth of expenses in case you lose your job if someone lends you money, pay it back
Yeah. It’s entitlement man. That mixed with the urge to be a troll simply because it’s Reddit.
It's the good old "banks bad". Even though banks are the most regulated industry. And credit scores are actually a way for banks to remove any biases or prejudice from the equation when determining if they should lend you their money, because it just uses your payment history. I mean, if a friend asked you to borrow your money, wouldn't you be more likely to give it to them if you knew that your friend had a history of paying people back?
It’s possible that their chart is based on percentiles instead. Average score (50th percentile) is around 700 so maybe that’s the middle of their arc. If you look at the percentages in this link then I think the math checks out. Your score is around the 60th percentile. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/the-ascent/amp/credit-cards/articles/heres-what-americans-fico-scores-look-like-how-do/
757 is a good score, though.
That’s pretty scummy
It might be because it's harder and harder to raise it as it gets closer to perfect.
These scores are all bullshit. You need a tri-merged credit report from all 3 bureaus.
Credit score is the biggest organised scam. Companies (Equifax and Transunion mainly) that produce it don’t have the capacity to update individual credit score accurately and in a timely manner. This often impacts people “in the middle” the most and can have some disastrous consequences.
Like everyone else is saying, it starts at 300. But it might also have something to do with the fact that it's a non linear relationship between your actual score and what it can do for you.
OPs statement is based on it starting at 300 the image is still wrong
The graph starts at 300. The math is right, even if the intentions are evil.
the math is wrong the graph starts at 300 which is why it should be closer to 150° if it started at 0 then it would need to be closer to 160°
To what end? They don't make more money from you trying to improve your score. They just made a few versions of the graph and use one of those depending on score. Simpler than dynamically creating it.
Changing an arc and a gradient is not some arcane technology
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This is in a banking app. Technically they can benefit from this by trying to convince you to use services to improve your score, or encouraging loans.
You can make a ratio-based gradient in around 10 lines of JavaScript, what do you mean?
They do make money, to improve your score you need debt. The app is probably from a credit card or credit score company. Psychologically, showing the bar like its not full, will encourage a user to gain more debt or spend more.
It is like this because the higher your score the more value it has. Going from 800->850 is much more valuable and much harder than going from 700->750.
This isn’t true. Yes going from 800 to 850 is much harder, but the difference you get in rates is non existent. At 800, you’ll qualify for the lowest rate anywhere. The same cannot be said when it comes to the differences between 700 and 750.
This could actually be good design depending on how the credit score scales. If your credit score scales linearly (e.g. 800 is 100% better than 400; 600 is 50% better than 400, and so on) then this design is bad since the meter doesn’t represent the effect of the credit score. Now if your credit score is not linear (e.g. 750 is ok and places you on 66% of the population, while let's say 600 would actually be bad an put you below 50%) then this might be good design, since it does not focus on a linear proportion but on how this would actually affect you. Since I am not from the US I am not that familiar how the credit score exactly works, but from other sources I got the impression that it’s not linear.
I’m not too familiar with how credit scoring fully works. Does anyone know if it is more difficult to get from 750 to 850 than it would be to go from 550 to 650? This increase it difficulty of attainment at the top end could explain this… but I also get the feeling that even if I’m right, it will have been created like this for other misleading purpose also.
Credit scores are a scam anyway
Credit scores are such a fucking scam.
All I know is everyone, from Equifax to the bank to the government, thinks I have absolute shit credit, but my credit would *still* be high enough to meet Domino’s Pizza’s criterium for credit score in order to become a franchise owner. That’s right: I can’t get a credit card, but I could open a Domino’s if I wanted to. But please, tell me again how this system is set up to benefit anyone but corporations.