topic Re: Credit Utilization and score affect in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Credit Utilization and score affect

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 21:13:46 GMT

Hi all,

So my score is hovvering around 640. I have never missed a payment anywhere, my AAoA is creeping up now, so my low score is down to my level of debt and utilization rates.

I have 10 cards, 8 of which are reporting more than 90% utilization, so for all intents and purposes maxed out. I have no issue making payments, but I do want to get my score back up. If I were to reduce utilization on all cards to less than 85%, which will bring me down to the next threshold, approximately what sort of bump should I expect?

This is just the start of me paying down all of the cards to a more relaistic utilization rate, just interested to see what people think I could expect as a bump in the short term by getting under 85% across the board

Thanks

Re: Credit Utilization and score affect

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 21:51:47 GMT

It's minimal and your focus should be bringing them to $0 and keeping them under 10% on 1 card. This approach could easily get you over 700 if your'e looking to apply for something new. But the big issue is obviously keeping the debt down. Life happens but, keeping your debt at those levels is risking CLD and potentially closure if it's done for too long of a duration.

Re: Credit Utilization and score affect

Shooting-For-800 — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 21:53:28 GMT

I would guestimate .5 - .75 point per 1 percentage point reduced for the first 50 or so.

Re: Credit Utilization and score affect

SouthJamaica — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 22:42:15 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi all,

So my score is hovvering around 640. I have never missed a payment anywhere, my AAoA is creeping up now, so my low score is down to my level of debt and utilization rates.

I have 10 cards, 8 of which are reporting more than 90% utilization, so for all intents and purposes maxed out. I have no issue making payments, but I do want to get my score back up. If I were to reduce utilization on all cards to less than 85%, which will bring me down to the next threshold, approximately what sort of bump should I expect?

This is just the start of me paying down all of the cards to a more relaistic utilization rate, just interested to see what people think I could expect as a bump in the short term by getting under 85% across the board

Thanks

You need to get it much lower than that. Sorry.

Re: Credit Utilization and score affect

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 22:50:54 GMT

The threshholds are 8.9%, 28.9%, 48.9%, 68.9% & finally 88.9%. It's hard to say what kind of a point increase you'll get because there are a lot of other factors that go into your score, and having all the cards at 85% really isn't much different than 88.9%. Can you post your cards with your balances/CL? Seeing exactly what you are dealing with might give us some insight on recommendations on how to attack the debt & get everything down.

Re: Credit Utilization and score affect

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 00:53:08 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

I have 10 cards, 8 of which are reporting more than 90% utilization, so for all intents and purposes maxed out. I have no issue making payments, but I do want to get my score back up. If I were to reduce utilization on all cards to less than 85%, which will bring me down to the next threshold, approximately what sort of bump should I expect?

What is your aggregate utilization? 8 of 10 cards over 90% utilization doesn't tell the whole story. Those 8 cards could all be $500 limit cards, where your other 2 could be $10k limit cards without balances. In that scenario for example this person could have aggregate utilization around 15%.

If your aggregate utilization is 90%+ and you brought it down to under 88.9% I'd estimate a minimal jump of around 10 points.