Utilization above 10% --> cost me about 10 points

[SouthJamaica]

Little data point:

For 6 months or more I had been playing around with my utilization, going from zero to 5%, and finding that no matter what I did it didn't make a difference in my FICO scores.

This time, due to a variety of circumstances, my utilization went to 12%, and that did catch the FICO algorithm's attention, and cost me about 10 points.

The Vantage 3 scores seemed to drop about 30 points. And the Cap One credit tracker score seemed to drop around 10.

It appears that the dividing line is 10%: under 10% golden; over 10% you drop from an A to a B.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for sharing , I experienced the same thing several months ago. 

[Anonymous]

Hey SJ!  Very helpful.

Can you clarify one thing for us?  It sounds like your total utilization went from <5 to 12%, with a prompt score hit.  Did that also involve a change in the number of credit cards reporting a balance?  If so, how many cards do you have total, and what was the number of cards showing a balance (before and after)?

You suggest that 10% is probably a significant dividing line for total U, and you may well be right.  There's one more thing worth mentioning, and that is that tribal wisdom here suggests that FICO always rounds utilization up to the nearest whole number.  So to stay in your proposed golden range (1-9%), a person would want to make sure that he lowered his total U to less than 8.99%.  If he lowered it to 9.01%, by contrast, that would put him at a total U of 10%.

[Imperfectfuture]

I saw the greatest pop when temporary report of 4% TOTAL util. Note, one card was above 10%.

Edit: and one card was at exactly 10%.

[Anonymous]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

Little data point:

For 6 months or more I had been playing around with my utilization, going from zero to 5%, and finding that no matter what I did it didn't make a difference in my FICO scores.

This time, due to a variety of circumstances, my utilization went to 12%, and that did catch the FICO algorithm's attention, and cost me about 10 points.

The Vantage 3 scores seemed to drop about 30 points. And the Cap One credit tracker score seemed to drop around 10.

It appears that the dividing line is 10%: under 10% golden; over 10% you drop from an A to a B.

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Thanks. Good info!

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hey SJ!  Very helpful.

Can you clarify one thing for us?  It sounds like your total utilization went from <5 to 12%, with a prompt score hit.  Did that also involve a change in the number of credit cards reporting a balance?  If so, how many cards do you have total, and what was the number of cards showing a balance (before and after)?

.........

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Yes there was a change in the number of cards reporting a balance.

Before there were 13 cards, with usually about 3 reporting.

This past cycle there 14 cards, with 9 reporting a balance.

[Anonymous]

Thanks much, SJ.  It's hard to know for sure how much of the 10 point drop owes to crossing from 5% to 12% total U.  Most of it may owe to the increase in the number of CCs reporting a balance.

The other likely culprit is that you added a new credit card (you went from 13 CCs total to 14). 

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks much, SJ.  It's hard to know for sure how much of the 10 point drop owes to crossing from 5% to 12% total U.  Most of it may owe to the increase in the number of CCs reporting a balance.

The other likely culprit is that you added a new credit card (you went from 13 CCs total to 14). 

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I'm pretty sure it's the utilization percentage. Expecting scores to bounce back on this cycle as utilization goes down.

The card that was added had a statement date just a few days after I received the card and put a 50% + balance transfer on it. That alone accounted for about half the total utilization. I don't think it was the card, it was the balance transfer.