topic Re: 1 Card 45%? Or 2 Cards: 40% & 15%? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

1 Card 45%? Or 2 Cards: 40% & 15%?

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 08:48:52 GMT

So, I have a 0% offer on my Platinum right now that has about 40% utilization on it, with it being the only card that will be reporting a balance as of next month and planning from here on out. I need to make 1 more purchase that will either add about 5% more to that or have a 2nd card report 15ish% instead. I don't plan on doing anything any time soon other than a CLI here and there. I realize that the score doesn't really matter that much since I have no intentions of anything new anytime soon, but would still like to minimize damage here. From what I gather, having the 2nd card report will probably cost around 5 points in a perfect world (I believe anyways). Not sure what having just 1 report 45% instead of 40% would do, if anything. Just not sure which scenario would be better here.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Re: 1 Card 45%? Or 2 Cards: 40% & 15%?

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 10:38:46 GMT

An individual card going from 40% to 45% utilization would likely have no impact on FICO score based on the individual card utilization, but you need to consider your before/aggregate utilization with the 5% increase... which would of course be the same change whether you increase that one card 5% or put those dollars across multiple cards. Aggregate utilization is King to individual card utilization.

What you need to consider if deciding to take on another "account with a balance" is how many accounts with a balance (and percentage) you have before/after adding 1 more. If it's a significant change, (say) going from 2 out of 5 total accounts to 3 out of 5 total accounts it would be more meaningful than if you had 20 open accounts and were going from 2 out of 20 to 3 out of 20. Just something to keep in mind.

Re: 1 Card 45%? Or 2 Cards: 40% & 15%?

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Feb 2019 11:03:21 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
An individual card going from 40% to 45% utilization would likely have no impact on FICO score based on the individual card utilization, but you need to consider your before/aggregate utilization with the 5% increase... which would of course be the same change whether you increase that one card 5% or put those dollars across multiple cards. Aggregate utilization is King to individual card utilization.

What you need to consider if deciding to take on another "account with a balance" is how many accounts with a balance (and percentage) you have before/after adding 1 more. If it's a significant change, (say) going from 2 out of 5 total accounts to 3 out of 5 total accounts it would be more meaningful than if you had 20 open accounts and were going from 2 out of 20 to 3 out of 20. Just something to keep in mind.

Ok, thanks! I know for the most part, aggregate utilization plays the larger role. Just read something on here while trying to figure this out, that each card reporting a balance tends to hit ya for a handful of points at the very least. So wasn't sure if that was still entirely accurate and/or if there would actually be any difference between 40 and 45, since it seems like the next marker is 50ish%(+).

It's going to be going from 5 with a balance to X (either the 1 or 2) with about 7-8% aggregate out of 12 open cards. So, my aggregate will still be in a good place. So would be 2/10, which is a bit worse off than 3/20 from your scenario. So thinking that the 1 would be better?

Re: 1 Card 45%? Or 2 Cards: 40% & 15%?

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 04:24:34 GMT

It honestly probably doesn't matter with your profile, so I'd just roll with whatever you feel most comfortable with. Any point difference if there is even one would be a few points at most, definitely nothing to worry about.

Re: 1 Card 45%? Or 2 Cards: 40% & 15%?

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Feb 2019 08:55:03 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
It honestly probably doesn't matter with your profile, so I'd just roll with whatever you feel most comfortable with. Any point difference if there is even one would be a few points at most, definitely nothing to worry about.

Ok, ty!