Paid down revolving accounts, no score change

[Anonymous]

Hey folks - Can anyone help me understand what level I need to pay down my utlization to in order to see a score bump? In the last couple months I have paid down my revolving accounts from 20% to 18% and now down to 14%. But still haven't seen a single point change. I've read all over that paying down utilization is the key but is there some lower threshhold I need to hit in order to see a difference? For instance, does the score change in percentage increments? So in other words does my utilization need to hit 10% or lower to see any effect?

I'm really concerned about seeing my Experian score bounce back. Three weeks ago it was at 652 and then an erroneous collection was added which took it down to 614. I had that collection removed within 3 days but my score only jumped back up to 628 and hasn't budged. What more can I do?

[Anonymous]

I think 9% is where you will see the next score increase. At least that is what I keep reading on forums.

[Revelate]

There's likely a small breakpoint somewhere in there when we're talking aggregate utilization.  It wouldn't be huge, FICO doesn't change much with small numbers when we're talking aggregate utilization, we're talking breakpoints 20-30% apart or even more in some cases.  

I don't know about the 9% breakpoint as I never really got to test it personally but it wound up in our forum wisdom, I am convinced that darned close to optimal for everyone (admittedly not everyone needs to go this far) is a couple of bucks on a single revolving tradeline.  

The key really is getting out from under the credit card debt, as that's a straight financial win... FICO sees that as a good thing, but it's really a secondary consideration.

Finances come first, always.