How often does your credit score change?

Question

On Dec 14th I made a huge payment spread through all my credit cards reducing most to $0 and leaving low balances on the rest ($20,000 paid towards revolving credit of $30,000). How long before it is reflected in my credit score? It's been over a month and I don't see any change.

The $20k used towards the revolving credit is not from another bank loan. It was obtained from help from within the family. No paper trails.

Answer 1

As a general rule your credit score should change the moment adjustments are made to your report. Since it is all done by computer, the change is instant. However, you are talking about credit bureaus and they are not exactly known for their honesty, integrity or accuracy. They only care about selling the information, nothing else matters.

Now, what should happen and what does, as you have found out, aren't always the same. But there are other things to consider as well. Did you obtain that $20k you used to pay down your credit cards through a bank loan? If so, your credit score will drop because of taking on a new debt and all the credit to debt, debt to income, income to credit, ratios are factored into the equation. Then the secret equation is run (and it truly is a secret, even the credit reporting agencies don't know what it is because Fair Isaac doesn't tell them) and a magic number is popped out.

Now, through years of observation by people with all kinds of letters after their names we have been able to figure out the basics of how the program works and have tried to educate the population about proper credit management as we understand it. But the truth is that there is only one person in the United States who knows EXACTLY how your credit score is determined. And he doesn't play fair. His name: Fair Isaac.

Answer 2

Credit scores can change every day. There are so many factors that go into calculating your credit score that it is very difficult to predict how one change will affect your rating.

I am a mortgage broker, so I deal with credit issues on a daily basis. Usually doing what you did, paying down revolving credit lines, is the very best way to improve your credit scores, but you do have to wait for the companies you paid off to report the new balances. There is no way to know for sure how long it will take the companies to report the changes.

If you have re-pulled your credit and the changes have not been made, you can appeal to each credit bureau for them to update your records. All three bureaus have online dispute procedures. Go to the main website for each credit bureau and look for the links to dispute incorrect information. If you have a statement proving the new account balances it will help a lot. This process could take 30 more days, but it is free.

There are also some companies who will do rapid rescores where changes will be made in 3-5 days, but sometimes they can be expensive.

Answer 3

Technically, your credit score is constantly changing based on when the accounts report their information. The only issue that you will run into is that credit reports can run 30-60 days behind your actual balance information.

If you're applying for anything face-to-face within that 30-60 day period, review your report with the person that pulled it. This way you can see which accounts on the report are not be reflecting your CURRENT balances. The person that you've applied with can easily update any information with a quick phone call the the account in question. Once they get the numbers corrected, they can contact their finance department and make sure you get the better rate or higher loan amount.

Answer 4

Wait another month and then check. I just closed a couple of accounts and they told me 30-60 days for the info to get on my credit report. Now I'm not sure about the score changing. I will be watching this also.

Answer 5

I can tell you that I have that credit monitoring service, and things are usually reflected on my report about a week after the payment due date. Sometimes a payment will not be on there for 30 days but that is very rare. Hope that helps.

Answer 6

lenders generally document to reporting businesses on a quarterly foundation, so wait and notice, provide it a pair extra months and if it nevertheless hasn't replaced than dispute the get admission to with the employer and the creditor.