Score is going up as my utilization goes up?

[Anonymous]

I seriously have no idea how these credit agencies come up with these scores, I've recently started trying to build my credit was about 595-605 in April now i'm between 640-670 but what i've been told by many is to have a lower utilization ratio on all cards (under 10%) so I followed that advise for a few moths and didn't see much of any increase in my scores. It wasn't till I started raising my utilization on a few cards (some over 50%) did I notice a quick and sharp rise in my credit scores, they jumped nearly 30+ points each as the balances increased.

On the cards that I raised the balances they both have a $1,000 limit and I'm using about 65% of the total credit limit on those, all told I have 6 credits cards with a total of about $21,000 in credit of which I use about 17% percent of the credit. 

So my question is, are the agencies just looking at the utilzation on all the cards as a whole or do they moniter utilization on each individual card?

[Gunnar419]

They look at both overall utilization and individual card utilization.

Unfortunately you can't really conclude that higher utilization is pushing your score up. It may look like it but it could be something else, like your credit aging.

I've been having something similar going on. While my overall balances haven't increased that much, I've gone from 2 cards (of 6) reporting to 4 cards reporting, another thing that's supposed to be a FICO baddie. Yet my EQ FICO has gone up about 10 points. I'm laughing because it looks as if the extra balances reporting are causing the increase, but more likely it's that my credit is one year older now and a couple of inquiries have dropped off.

You just never know sometimes.

[NRB525]

I would guess both of you are experiencing the main positive driver of your credit score: Having open balances, reasonable amounts (a few hundred or a low thousands) of open amounts, and paying on time for each monthly payment.

Can you each list the cards you are using, their limits, their current balances, and when each card was opened? That will give us a perspective on how your credit file looks for average age of accounts and length of payment history.

Good to hear your scores are increasing.