How Often Is Credit Score Adjusted?

Credit scores are technically adjusted any time you are engaged in a credit-related activity that impacts factors in your credit score. However, many of the reporting indicators from lenders and other businesses that report on your borrowing activity are not reported immediately. Thus, your actual score may remain constant for a several days, weeks or even months in certain instances.

Credit Score Basics

A large number of specific borrowing activities impact your credit history. Essentially, any time you use a credit account, make payment on a credit account, are late for payment, apply for new credit or otherwise engage in credit-related activity, you can positively or negatively affect you score. To simply things, the FICO scoring model, which is the basis for credit score computations from all three major credit reporting bureaus, offers five broad scoring categories -- credit history, length of credit, amounts used, new credit and types of credit.

Immediate Change

In his article, "How often do credit scores change?," CreditShout founder Kevin Fleming explains that your credit score can change on a daily basis. However, many score-related activities are not reported for 30 to 60 days. It is very possible that you could apply for a new credit card or use a card and have the activity updated almost immediately. If you check your credit score through one of the reporting bureaus -- Equifax, Experian or TransUnion -- you could find that your score changes one day to the next.

Credit History Effects

Fleming also points out that the broader and deeper your credit history, the less affect new activity has on your score. For instance, someone just starting out with credit will typically get a bigger score boost from just a few on-time payments. However, if you have years of credit history and a relatively good score, it takes longer for regular, positive activity to help your score continue to rise.

Delayed Reporting

As noted, some activities have delayed reporting time frames, which means they do not impact your score immediately. Mortgage lenders sometimes do not report you as late on a payment until a few weeks after the common two week payment grace period. Other creditors often do not report late payments for a few weeks. The Credit Karma Blog provides an example in which a gas credit card application resulted in a six point score drop in one day from the credit inquiry. However, the increased credit limit reduces the debt utilization ratio, a good thing, but change often takes weeks to positively impact your score.