Your FICO score says a lot about your financial whereabouts. While you may know the factors that affect your FICO score, you may not be aware of the factors that are never included in your FICO score. Yes, you heard it right. There are certain factors that don’t hurt or heal your credit health.
Here’s a list of the factors that won’t affect your FICO score:
1. Old credit data
Bankruptcies and charge-offs that are more than 10 years and 7 years old respectively won’t hamper your FICO score. This is because, after the completion of the tenure these are considered as old credit information and hence, don’t get reported on your credit report.
2. Few personal information
Have you ever felt that you’re denied a loan due to your age or religion? If you did, then it’s not true. Remember, FICO admits that “U.S. law prohibits credit scoring from considering race, color, sex, religion, national origin, and marital status as well as any receipt of public assistance, or the exercise of any consumer right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act.” Nevertheless, your credit report may have the name of your current or ex-spouse if both of you have joint accounts. Also, your FICO score does not consider your age, salary, occupation, title, employer, date employed or employment history, and the place where you live.
Read more: 50 Million People have score of 785 & above! You?
4. Interest Rate Data
Your credit report only shows the list of your balance, amount due, total paid and unpaid credit card and loan accounts. The amount of interest you pay for your credit card and loan accounts isn’t incorporated in your credit report. Hence, how much money you pay toward the interest of your credit card and loan accounts doesn’t add up your FICO score.
5. On-time utility payments
Unpaid utility accounts that get reported to the credit bureaus can hurt your FICO score. Keep in mind timely monthly utility bill payments isn’t reported to the credit bureaus. Hence, it doesn’t affect your FICO score. If you think that on-time monthly bill payments for services like electricity, telephone, water, cable, the Internet, etc gets reported to the three main credit bureaus and would improve your FICO score, then you’re absolutely mistaken.
6. Certain types of inquiries
Your FICO score doesn’t count three types of inquiries such as:
- Consumer-initiated inquiries - the requests you have made to check your credit report.
- Promotional inquiries - the requests made by your lenders so as to make you a ‘pre-qualified’ credit offer.
- Administrative inquiries - the requests made by your lenders to check your account with theirs.
Read also: 5 Things People With Good Credit Avoid
7. Credit counseling
It is quite obvious that if you’re in over your head with debt, you may seek help from a credit counselor. Many of you have this notion that participating in a credit counseling program will hurt your FICO score. But, the reality is whether or not you participate in credit counseling won’t affect your FICO score.
8. Imprisonment
Do you think that your detention would show up on your credit report and affect your FICO score? If so, then that’s not true. Even if you go to jail, your FICO score would remain intact.
9. Receiving government benefits
Getting government assistance such as obtaining food stamps or living on disability has nothing to do with your credit and won’t turn up on your credit report.
10. Debit card
Whether or not you use a debit card, it won’t break or build your FICO score. So, thinking that using and maintaining a debit card properly would improve your FICO score isn’t true. According to Bruce McClary at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, “debit cards may look and feel like a credit card and you can use it in a similar way, but that’s where the similarities end.”
I hope now you know, what are the factors that don’t influence your FICO score?
