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I just pulled my report again. First time since January. It was a 670 with TU then. One of the things hurting me at that time was no revolving accounts. I've since opened up a CC with Cap One- a $500 unsecured card. I've been paying it. I used it for a work trip and paid all of it down except 10% before it reported last month so it wouldn't hurt me. I pulled my report today. Score for TU is up to 686 but now says I'm using too much of revolving balance. It shows it's 10% but it says it's too high. I'm confused. My stimulator says that if I pay it all off ($50) it could possibly raise my score to 706.
I guess I'm confused as to why %10 is too high. Is it just because it's a low limit card? Could it also have to do with adding that $50 to my student loan debt is making it worse? Should I just not worry about that since my score rose? I'm trying to buy a new (used) car in next month.
This is a great example of the commonly-stated advice to keep your reported util UNDER 10%, meaning 9.00000000000% (you get the idea) or less.
Perhaps you get hit more because you only have one card.
Is this your first-listed negative? If not, it's probably not hurting you that much. But you might want to shoot for letting your balance report as $45 or less. Also, there have been some posts by others with only one card indicating that they don't get hurt for having their one card (= all their cards) report $0, while those with multiple cards do lose points for all with $0.
Alas, there are so few posters here with only one card that it's hard to find out for sure.