It's Going to Be a While

I’ve been watching my credit score for a while now on Credit Karma and it hasn’t changed a single point. I think I might be at somewhat of a ceiling with regards to that…

Using their little simulator thing, even if I pay off almost all of my revolving debt, it still won’t have much of any effect on my score. Even if I pay everything properly for the next 6 months… still nothing. I do have a theory though.

A few years ago I had a bit of a spell of late payments as I started to get behind and things started going badly for me – kind of all around. It was roughly June of 2006 that all of this happened… which ironically enough (or not) coincides with another event in my life. I think a few things got up to as much as 90 days late (one might even have been 120 days).

Unfortunately (along with my high balances and debt to credit ratio) this is a huge part of why my score is not as fantastic as it could be. Another part of the simulator let me see what happens if I make regular payments for the next 12+ months… THAT is where my score actually jumped up. So it looks like 4 years is some sort of magic number for those late payments. I’m sure they will stay on there longer than that – but it seems that might be at least one point where they affect my score less.

Assuming no other changes, my score would only increase 8 points with on-time payments for the next 3-12 months. At 15 months my score jumps 43 points. Ya… I’d say the late payments are part of the problem.