General Credit Topics

[albinotiger]

Hi.. long time lurker , first time poster..total utilization of all cards is 47%.. availibe credit around 15000 with about 7300 owed.. my tu (walmart) is 655..i want to lease a car in a few months so i need a good 25 point bump..have not been late on any payment for four years ., have a bunch of lates prior to january 2009..i am trying to gw which im sure will help score... i have a few hp from new credit cards i got this past May..I know what i did wrong in regards to hps, but looking ahead now.. my question is this.. by lowering my utl.. at what next percentage am i likley to see a good jump in score.. for example would 40% utl be a jump. .. would 37.5% be a better jump , etc... i ask this because i cant pay it all off.. but i may be able to get it down to those levels.. so what do you think would be the percentage to shoot for.. ps.. be fan of this site and all the great advice and knowledge..

[CruzImperial]

I don´t think this has been proven but from my experience every 10% is a jump in the scores.

10%, 20%, 30% hits hard last time I saw it.

Anyways, the lower the better. I wish someone here could come with a number though

[HoldingOntoHope]

I can't speak to the 30% but I know from experience over the past several months that 20% is a marker for me. At or above 20% and I lose about 6-10 points from being at 19% or below. This may vary also depending on what else is in your credit report i.e. what "scoring bucket" you happen to be in. FICO has so many moving parts it is oftentimes difficult to extrapolate a minor change in score being directly related to an action in your reports.

I do know that a new negative would be a drastic change. And I am looking forward to 02/13 to see if the last negative information to drop is a large positive. I know currently there is a 60-70 point difference between my EQ (clean) and my TU (dirty with 1 negative).