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JoeBJay20,
That's interesting to me. I watch my credit balances and their effect on scores; and wondered if this was the case. At one point, my DH had 2 cards, a $500 Orchard and a $10,000 Alliant. When the Orchard balance went from 0 to $138 ( think that's about 21% on the account but 7% overall), he took a 16 point hit. Later, with a 3rd card reporting, when the Alliant went from 0 to $750 (about 7% on the account but about 5% overall), he gained 11 points.
And, of course, when he went from $800 to $2400 on Alliant (that's 32% on the card, 22% overall) he got an 18 point beating. Thanks for fine-tuning my understanding of balances. I know overall utilization is best at < 9%, and even better as you get down to 1%. I'm guessing that the individual credit balances are also best at 9% or below?? So when DH lets his ONE CC report (he now has seven cards rather than two), we'll be sure to keep that card below 9%.
Fair Isaac has repeatedly reported that overall % util and indiv. card utilizations count about equally in their scoring algorithm.
So paying down a maxed, or close to maxed, CC is a signicant step in improving FICO score.
I would expect a jump of at least 20 pts.