topic Question about Utilization Rate in General Credit Topics

Question about Utilization Rate

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 12:55:42 GMT

Since rebuilding, I'm borderline OCD about my credit scores and paying bills early - even on non-credit items.

I know the golden rule is the to keep utilization as low as possible, never more than 30% at the highest. I'm somewhere around the 14-15% rate.

Will dropping it even further to say 5% make a significant difference in my scores? I'm tending my garden right now and aging some newwer lines.

Re: Question about Utilization Rate

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 20:21:30 GMT

9% and below is what you want to shoot for.

Re: Question about Utilization Rate

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 06:12:04 GMT

Below 10%, as Matt said, is what you want to aim for.

I've heard many others say this, and it's also empirically where I've observed my highest scores on a month-to-month basis.

Re: Question about Utilization Rate

Appleman — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 16:20:03 GMT

You are scored on both overall revolving utilization and individual card utilization.

Points that I personally have seen improvements over the years related to utilization:

Below 90% (anything at or above 90% is considered MAXXED)

Below 70%

Below 50%

Below 30%

Below 10% (meaning 9% or less).

Re: Question about Utilization Rate

righthererightnow — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 14:03:49 GMT

the lower you go the more your score will go up... maybe just a point or two, but it will go up.

Re: Question about Utilization Rate

takeshi74 — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 23:19:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm somewhere around the 14-15% rate.
Will dropping it even further to say 5% make a significant difference in my scores?

No idea. Drop it, monitor your scores and see. It will help to some degree but whether or not 14-15% to 5% would yield a significant scoring change for you isn't something we can really tell you and also depends on what you specifically mean by "significant" (how many points and for what specific scoring model?). I'd expect a fair bit of improvement for a drop of ~10% but not a drastic change like from going from 40% to 10%, for example.

@Anonymous wrote:
I'm tending my garden right now and aging some newwer lines.

Then why the fuss over it? There's really no benefit to worrying over it unless you're apping for new credit and you can drop it when you get to that point. Still, your time, your call.

@Anonymous wrote:
Since rebuilding, I'm borderline OCD about my credit scores and paying bills early - even on non-credit items.

Obsessive != OCD