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Let's say I'm using...
1st card - $400 of $2000 credit line -20% of this card
2nd card - $1000 of 2000 credit line - 50% of this card
3rd card - $ $400 of $1000 credit line - 40%of this card
I'm using one of them at 50% of my credit but overall I'm only using 36%. Does that still consider that I'm using 50% of my available credit?
If I'm confusing anyone of you, my question really goes back to the title.
(I'm also wondering does auto loan or lease takes account into the credit utilization ratio over at the Auto Loan forum)
@Anonymous wrote:Let's say I'm using...
1st card - $400 of $2000 credit line -20% of this card
2nd card - $1000 of 2000 credit line - 50% of this card
3rd card - $ $400 of $1000 credit line - 40%of this card
I'm using one of them at 50% of my credit but overall I'm only using 36%. Does that still consider that I'm using 50% of my available credit?
If I'm confusing anyone of you, my question really goes back to the title.
(I'm also wondering does auto loan or lease takes account into the credit utilization ratio over at the Auto Loan forum)
Utilization is based on each card and overall usage across all revolving lines.
From what I have seen from my reports:
You are getting dinged for one account being at 50% IF that puts you into the next BUCKET.
You are getting dinged for the overall being at 36% IF that puts you into the next BUCKET.
Examples of "buckets" that seem to be reported are: 1-9% utilization and 80-100% utilization. I don't know where the buckets are in between 10 and 80 but there seem to be "several" but not "many". Perhaps someone has kept track of this?
A perfect example is when I had an $800 balance on a $12K limit card. I paid the balance but they generated a statement with $3.40 interest. ANY balance gets rounded up to the 1-9% bucket. My score didn't jump up until I paid off the $3.40 and the CC reported $0.00 balance next month.
Also the answer to your question of "Either" or "Or" is "Both".
YoungEntrepeneur wrote:
Utilization is based on all your revolving lines combined, not individually.
When it comes to scoring, this is not the case; FICO takes into account both overall util and util on individual cards.
@Scamp wrote:
@YoungEntrepeneur wrote:
Utilization is based on all your revolving lines combined, not individually.When it comes to scoring, this is not the case; FICO takes into account both overall util and util on individual cards.
Yea, thats why i was so surprised when I see my credit analysor, it said that I'm using over 50% of my revolving account. I immediately noticed one of my account. I originally thought it counts the overall.
GregB wrote:
From what I have seen from my reports:
You are getting dinged for one account being at 50% IF that puts you into the next BUCKET.
You are getting dinged for the overall being at 36% IF that puts you into the next BUCKET.
Examples of "buckets" that seem to be reported are: 1-9% utilization and 80-100% utilization. I don't know where the buckets are in between 10 and 80 but there seem to be "several" but not "many". Perhaps someone has kept track of this?
A perfect example is when I had an $800 balance on a $12K limit card. I paid the balance but they generated a statement with $3.40 interest. ANY balance gets rounded up to the 1-9% bucket. My score didn't jump up until I paid off the $3.40 and the CC reported $0.00 balance next month.
Also the answer to your question of "Either" or "Or" is "Both".
Call the utilization steps "buckets" or "tiers", I wonder what FICO calls them. I do feel that the ranges are a bit coarser than your suggestion. Or possibly the "steps" are that fine but it takes more than one "step" to change your score. Wait, that means there is no reason to have three digits in your FICO score.......... I guess we will never know reality as dictated by the FICO gods....
I can tell you that a few months ago my Kohl's charge went from $54 to $360 against a $1500 limit. That changed my FICO score a few points according to Scorewatch.
I recently got an alert that my Advanta went from $1692 to $6525 against a $18000 limit. The alert said "The balance on one of your accounts has increased by $4833. Your score is 734 and has not changed since March 1, 2009". I have noticed a similar pattern in the past where small changes sometimes affect scores and large changes sometimes don't. I'm tossing out the ones where the number of accounts with balances changes as that throws in another variable.
The score changes that I am noticing on individual CC accounts seem to be caused by 0%, 1-10%, 10-80%, 80-100% or something similar. The overall utilizations seem finer than that, of course.
Opinions?