topic Re: Utilization Question in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Utilization Question

brcamacho — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:06:18 GMT

I have a total of $11,450 across 7 cards. I am using 27% of my total avalible credit.

4 of the cards are 0 balance, and the other 3 are at 77%,49% and 70% utilization.

For the biggest boost in fico should i just keep on payin off the lowest balance card to get another one at 0 utilization or should i be spreading my money out across all 3 cards?

Thanks in advance.

Re: Utilization Question

vanillabean — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:54:17 GMT

Since more than half of your cards are at zero, I wouldn't worry about zeroing another one until each is no higher than somewhere around ten to fiften percent. Less than fifty percent to begin with seems to be good advice.

Re: Utilization Question

brcamacho — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:58:34 GMT

Thanks for the reply.

Re: Utilization Question

Anonymous — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 01:49:03 GMT

Personally I would at this point is apply more money to the higher interst rate card to eliminat the debt.

Your UTIL is still high at 27% overall for scoring purposes.

If you eliminated another card by paying it down to zero that would lower your overall UTIL even further.

For best scoring purposes, you need to keep all CC's at a zero balance for when the statement hits except 1 of them. The one CC that you do have report a balance should not report more than 9% UTIL.

FICO scores... score on overall UTIL of all CC's and Individual UTIL of each CC.