topic Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:56:18 GMT

Anyone ever had MyFICO tell you what's hurting you is "heavy use" of revolving credit at 3%? My reported balances is $2120 with available reporting CL's of over $80k.

You've made heavy use of your available revolving credit.

Ratio of your revolving balances to your credit limits
3%For FICO High Achievers [?], this ratio is 7%, on average.

Your FICO score evaluates your total revolving credit [?] balances in relation to your total credit limits on those accounts. In your case, this ratio of balances to credit limits is too high.
Keep this in mind: This credit usage ratio is one of the most important factors to your FICO score, so you should work on paying down your balances. Your FICO score looks at the ratio of revolving debt, but not in which accounts the debt resides. Therefore, consolidating or moving your debt from one account to another will usually not help your FICO score since the same total amount is owed.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

cobaltnv — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:34:22 GMT

txjohn,

I assume this is from your TU report? I received the same negative April 2008 when my % utilization was at 5%. When I lowered my % utilization back down to 1% the comment went away and has not been seen since. I did also have an erroneous 30 late on my report at that time which was removed prior to my next pull (August 2008). Due to the 30 day late and the 5% utilization my TU score was 715 in April 2008. After a phone call and removal of the incorrectly charged late and lowering my % utilization to 1% my TU was back to 789.

It is not clear to me what prompted the 5% utilization being a negative comment as I have never let my % util get above 1% since and I never pay late.

Sorry I do not have more information for you.

Cheers

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:13:39 GMT

I had the same issue. Anything more than 1% UTIL hurts my score.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:30:47 GMT

@cobaltnv wrote:
txjohn,
I assume this is from your TU report? I received the same negative April 2008 when my % utilization was at 5%. When I lowered my % utilization back down to 1% the comment went away and has not been seen since. I did also have an erroneous 30 late on my report at that time which was removed prior to my next pull (August 2008). Due to the 30 day late and the 5% utilization my TU score was 715 in April 2008. After a phone call and removal of the incorrectly charged late and lowering my % utilization to 1% my TU was back to 789.

It is not clear to me what prompted the 5% utilization being a negative comment as I have never let my % util get above 1% since and I never pay late.

Sorry I do not have more information for you.
Cheers

Yes, it is TU. My current TU FICO (this morning) is 772 with the 3% utilization and this negative comment (the only neg comment - which is funny, it doesn't complain about recent new accounts or inqs). I have no derogs/lates and haven't had this comment applied unless above 7% in the past.

I guess for me it must be the combination of recent new accounts, 2 reporting CC balances (1600 on Discover and 443 on NFCU) and inqs (2 in past 2 years) that FICO wants me to keep ultra low balances/utilization.

I'll try paying off one balance to see if that tips it back.

One other TU paculiarity is that about 2 weeks ago an inquiry dropped prematurely. Then today I notice another dropped. I had 4, now only showing 2. Strange behavior over there at TU. They have always been the most trouble for me.

Message Edited by txjohn on 07-07-2009 10:30 AM

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

smallfry — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:33:02 GMT

3%? Just pay attention to the scores. That's crazy.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:19:58 GMT

@smallfry wrote:
3%? Just pay attention to the scores. That's crazy.

I think I have figured out why the neg comment at 3%. One card, Discover, reported on an odd date. So it is showing almost $1700 balance on $2000 limit. I'm thinking that this card being high utilization/ near maxed is the culprit.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

smallfry — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:21:35 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@smallfry wrote:
3%? Just pay attention to the scores. That's crazy.

I think I have figured out why the neg comment at 3%. One card, Discover, reported on an odd date. So it is showing almost $1700 balance on $2000 limit. I'm thinking that this card being high utilization/ near maxed is the culprit.

Probably it.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

haulingthescoreup — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:42:33 GMT

It is also because your score is getting high enough that it's running out of things to complain about. Since you're over 760, you only get one negative comment on myFICO reports, and the util is slightly more influential on your scores than are the new accounts and inqs, so that's why that one winds up as a comment. Plus Discover's hiccup, probably.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

FocusOnFICO — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:12:05 GMT

Hauling----thanks---that explains some of the cryptic comments I've recieved on a 791 TU and 783 EQ. Makes sense now---thanks.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

Anonymous — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:14:01 GMT

@haulingthescoreup wrote:
It is also because your score is getting high enough that it's running out of things to complain about. Since you're over 760, you only get one negative comment on myFICO reports, and the util is slightly more influential on your scores than are the new accounts and inqs, so that's why that one winds up as a comment. Plus Discover's hiccup, probably.

FICO has been generally very "forgiving" as my scores got higher. At 800 plus inquiries had virtually no affect. New accounts only had an effect 1 time, meaning that even with 6 new accounts it only ever talked about "newest account is 0 years old."

And recovery of FICO seems much quicker.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

haulingthescoreup — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:25:13 GMT

Just an fyi for anyone reading this, myFICO gives fewer comments as your scores get higher. The 800 club gets no negatives; 760-799 only gets one; somewhere around 720 only gets two; and so forth.

There are still negatives on your full report, as any lender will cheerfully tell you, but you just don't get them on myFICO reports. Why they do this, I don't know.

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:05:14 GMT

wow your lucky if i even have 1 cent owed tu complains about high util

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

Anonymous — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:30:37 GMT

@haulingthescoreup wrote:
Just an fyi for anyone reading this, myFICO gives fewer comments as your scores get higher. The 800 club gets no negatives; 760-799 only gets one; somewhere around 720 only gets two; and so forth.

There are still negatives on your full report, as any lender will cheerfully tell you, but you just don't get them on myFICO reports. Why they do this, I don't know.

Yes, there are those items that a "manual review" will potentially frown on. But for FICO scoring purposes, only those items commented are actually being scored against you, as I understand it???

I realize there are things that can push your score up, but only the neg comments push it down? Am I misinformed?

Re: Negative Comment: Heavy Useage at 3%?

haulingthescoreup — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:15:50 GMT

The negatives are always there, and they're always affecting your score. If a lender were to pull a full report on you and let you have a peek, you'd see the reason codes. There could be any number of them, even for those with high scores, but they might only lower your score a point or two.

Having only 1 negative comment certainly doesn't mean having only one negative factor affecting your score. My TU score likes to hop back and forth between 761 and 759, going from one comment to two. The #2 comment (short history) is based on something that's always there, whether it's a comment or not.

And for someone who is recovering from a credit mushroom cloud, they might only have 4 negatives listed on their myFICO reports, but they'd have many, many more negative factors hurting their scores and that would appear on the full reports.

So for instance, DH's scores are in the 800's, even with one 30-day late that's about 5 years old. Since he's 800+, he gets no negative comments from a myFICO score pull, but you can bet that it would be mentioned on whatever a lender pulls. It affects his scores, but by how much, I have no idea. 5 points? 10 points? It can't be much, because when he occasionally dips below 800, generally for letting a balance post, the one comment he gets is on letting a previously inactive account report, or whatever the terminology is.

I suppose one reason that we get fewer and fewer comments on our myFICO reports as our scores go higher is that it would make it easier to isolate causes and score effects on our scores, in our endless attempts to break the formulae. Once someone is up around 800, they can't have too many things going on with their reports, so there would be less of the confusion that plagues us everyday folk when our scores change by 5 points. Just a guess, though.