Utilization Score

[Anonymous]

Hi, sorry for the noob question, but I did a quick search and couldn't find anything on this...

I did find that credit card utilization reflects 30% of the FICO score, but could not find anything on at what point the score changes.  For instance, I assume that 100% utilization would give you the lowest possible utilization score, which would therefore affect 30% of your overall score. But what if you brought down the utilization percentage to under 80%? What about 50%? And so on...

I'm trying to figure out if it's worth paying down balances to get to under 80%, or if I should just wait until I can pay down to less than 50% or X%. I have no idea at what point the score is positively or negatively affected. For some reason, I have 80% in my head because I think someone suggested I pay down a credit card to 80% of utilization before firing off a goodwill letter. 

Thanks,

[bdhu2001]

As with everything, YMMV.  Thus, your credit mix & etc will affect what works best for you. There's been plenty of threads that discuss utilization, but the best advice is to consider that it changes every 10%.  Some believe that the concrete tiers are 49, 29 19 and 9%.  However, you score will change a few points in between and it will make a difference as to what you're doing on each individual card, not just overall. Here's one of the threads: http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Are-there-different-tiers-of-utilization/td-p/290966

Good luck to you!

[Anonymous]

Thanks. That was helpful. I somehow missed that thread when I searched. I know what my goal is (to have everything under 5%), but was just curious if and when I can expect a score change.  Thanks again. 

btw- Congrats on achieving and then exceeding your score goal! 

[cartwrna]

As weird as this may sound, I actually maxed out a low limit card and let it report just to see what would happen, I got a 7 point increase for high utilization lol