Why Do I Have Bad Credit if I’ve Made On-Time Payments? - Experian (2024)

FAQs

Why Do I Have Bad Credit if I’ve Made On-Time Payments? - Experian? ›

Your payment history—whether you have paid your bills on time or late—has the greatest impact on credit scores. However, it typically accounts for less than half of your score, usually between 30% and 40% of the total. Several other factors also are critical to being a good credit risk and having good credit scores.

Why might my credit scores drop after paying off debts? Paying off debt might lower your credit scores if removing the debt affects certain factors such as your credit mix, the length of your credit history or your credit utilization ratio.

What causes a bad credit score? Your credit score reflects how lenders see you. If you have a low credit score, there may be information on your credit report that lenders see negatively. For example, late payments may make lenders think you won't pay them on time, so your score will be lower to reflect this.

There are lots of reasons why your credit score could have gone down, including a recent late or missed payment, an application for new credit or a change to your credit limit or usage. The most important information to understand about credit is the factors that go into your scores.

Consistently paying off your credit card on time every month is one step toward improving your credit scores. However, credit scores are calculated at different times, so if your score is calculated on a day you have a high balance, this could affect your score even if you pay off the balance in full the next day.

According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the only reason a card issuer needs to inform you about a credit limit decrease is because you missed a payment, are only making minimum payments on a high balance or took some other negative action that raised a red flag.

Credit Utilization Ratio:

If your credit card balances are high compared to your credit limits, it can negatively impact your score. Even if you're paying on time, a high credit utilization ratio signals potential financial strain and can lead to a lower score.

Credit scores from the three main bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) are considered accurate. The accuracy of the scores depends on the accuracy of the information provided to them by lenders and creditors.

Credit scores can drop due to a variety of reasons, including late or missed payments, changes to your credit utilization rate, a change in your credit mix, closing older accounts (which may shorten your length of credit history overall), or applying for new credit accounts.

Why is Experian so much lower than FICO? ›

Why is my Experian credit score different from FICO? The credit scores you see when you check a service like Experian may differ from the FICO scores a lender sees when checking your credit. That's because the lender may be using a FICO score based on data from a different credit bureau.

Making on-time payments to creditors, keeping your credit utilization low, having a long credit history, maintaining a good mix of credit types, and occasionally applying for new credit lines are the factors that can get you into the 800 credit score club.

Payment History – High Impact

The margin for error on payment history is really low: 100% is excellent, 99% is good, and 97% is poor. This means it can take some time to recover from just a few missed payments. For example, if you made 100 payments and just 3 of them were late, you've got a poor score of 97%.

Improvement in your credit score is directly related to your financial activities. However, if you keep paying your debts on time and in full, you may see a change in your credit score by 200 points within six months to a few years.

Remember, building credit takes time and credit scoring models are based on your activity and account history over time. Simply put, one month of positive on-time payment history is great, but six to 12 months of positive payment history is better and will have a greater impact.

A very common, yet not entirely obvious cause, for a score to drop is an increased utilization ratio. An increased what ratio? Yes, this is credit scoring lingo, but it basically measures how much of your credit are you using in relation to your total available credit.

Your payment history—whether you have paid your bills on time or late—has the greatest impact on credit scores. However, it typically accounts for less than half of your score, usually between 30% and 40% of the total. Several other factors also are critical to being a good credit risk and having good credit scores.

Even if this is the first and only your payment is late by 30 days, it can still impact your score—by about 100 points or more, depending on the scoring model and your current credit score.