topic Re: Available Credit Utilization in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Available Credit Utilization

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:25:59 GMT

For carrying a 0 balance on all of my credit cards by accident of course. I normally try to leave a $1.00 to $2.00 balance on one card, but here is the results:

Equifax - I lost 0 pts

Transunion - I lost 12 pts for not utilizing my available credit

Experian - ?

I have one card that will report on the last day of the month which should bring that score back up.

Re: Available Credit Utilization

llecs — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:19:07 GMT

Thanks for posting! It falls in line with what some others have said about TU.

Re: Available Credit Utilization

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:01:24 GMT

Thanks Llecs.

Last month 3 of my cards showed a balance totaling up to $5.00 and here are the results:

Transunion - No change to score

Equifax - dropped 7 pts to 640 then gained 16 pts to 656 when only 2 cards showed a balance totaling $3.00

Re: Available Credit Utilization

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 23:29:55 GMT

Last month 3 of my cards showed a balance totaling up to $5.00 and here are the results:

Transunion - No change to score

Equifax - dropped 7 pts to 640 then gained 16 pts to 656 when only 2 cards showed a balance totaling $3.00. How do you explain this? I assume exactly one card showed a balance in the baseline being compared against. So, surprisingly, you gained 9 points by going from one to two cards showing a balance. Did anything else changes in your report?