FROM: Greg Fisher, greg@truthandfalsity.com
TO: Tom Harty, Meredith (via A. Slusark)
CC: Diane Herbst, People magazine (via J. Davison)); Diane Herbst; William Lansing, Fair Isaac (via G. Jawski)
DATE: August 4, 2020
SUBJECT: credit score, 30% utilization ratio #1411x

OPEN LETTER to be published at creditscoring.com/interaction/2020/08/03-people.html

Let's dispense with the notion that you don't see this message.

You published

1. Pay bills on time and in full, and keep the amount of credit you are using as compared to the credit available to you — called credit card utilization — below 30 percent.

"That's a maximum," says [Experian's Rod] Griffin. "The lower your balances are as compared to the limits the better."

Paying down your credit card balances can result in an almost immediate improvement in scores, he says, adding: "Your balances on your credit cards as compared to the credit limit is critical."

Payment history and your credit utilization rate account for about 65 percent of your score, according to FICO, a data analytics company focused on credit scoring services. To get a quick check on your credit utilization rate, try going to CreditKarma.com or NerdWallet.

#Myth4

However, according to Fair Isaac, the credit score company, "There is nothing significant about 30 percent revolving utilization."

You really have to ask yourself: What is the point of a credit line I cannot even use half of?

Assignment for Mr. Harty

Your assignment: Publish the change of the credit score of a person whose score is (riffing off your article) 669, and his so-called utilization ratio climbs from 29 to 31 percent. See the case of Santa Claus. Pick some kind of typical consumer to base it on. See "scorecard."

Last week, I wrote about Money magazine, a former property of People magazine's parent company, Meredith (the one you run). Until now, People stuck to people and stayed out of personal finance. But now, since you don't have the Money property any more, you just can't help himself, can you? You are compelled, like the rest of your world, to bloggity-blog about credit scores -- to get in on the action.

You won. I lost. Boo, hoo hoo. Now let's move on.

While credit scores are mentioned off-hand in other documents in the domain people.com, this article appears to be the first and only one dedicated to the topic. After this, please stop. Don't have anybody write another credit score article after clarifying the current one. You don't know what you are doing.

Here is the problem in a nutshell: The FICO credit score formulae are secret. If you want information about them, all you can really do is rely on a few statements from Fair Isaac here and there. You won't find the algorithm and, therefore, can make no definitive statements other than what the company revealed. And, even if you do rely on the company, you could be misled. #1411x

If you want the genesis of the 30 percent magic number, Ask Bruce Mcclary of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling about the sad case of Gail Cunningham. That woman would just not shut up. There's your people angle.

I started writing about this a decade ago.

The word expert is not mentioned in your article, only in the subtitle. Who wrote that? #TheHed

Verity test

Here is your test. Lindsay Kimble wrote, "In the New Yorker phone interview, which was published just a few days before the end of Scaramucci’s short Trump administration tenure, the 53-year-old told Lizza that he wanted 'to f—ing kill all the leakers,' and called then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus 'a f—-ing- paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac." #falsity #IA #Error14 #TheEditors

That is false. There is no man named Reince Preibus. The name of the person you're referring to is Priebus, not Preibus. What are you doing about that?

That error notwithstanding, I daresay that a human-interest item like that is the kind of thing people expect from People, not consumer reporting. And, tell Ms. Kimble to get my website URL off her Linkedin profile. #falsity #WA

Tee hee. I got a million of 'em.

What is an email address for People magazine? I found one for its parent company and link to it with your name.

Finally, if you think that this has something to do with the previous Meredith property at money.com, it is not (although you could argue that this sentence confilcts with that notion). It is serendipity. I found your credit score article with a robot that gives me daily updates on the term "credit score" coupled with terms like employers and 30 percent.

There are five questions in this letter. Please reply today. Not doing so to merely acknowledge receipt of this message will make this many times worse. I am sick and tired of silly nonsense. Do not publish false information. If you do, there are consequences. This is one of them. #TheContactGame

The word falsity is next to your name. Don't be stupid, Mr. Harty. #falsity

--
Greg Fisher
Truth and Falsity
truthandfalsity.com
The Credit Scoring Site
creditscoring.com
PO Box 342
Dayton, Ohio 45409-0342
mobile/text 937-681-3224
Whatsapp + 1 937-681-3224
Skype fisher100
creditscoring.com.vcf