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@aad041109 wrote:
@tcbofade wrote:NO!
You want TWO reporting zero. That's one critical part of FICO scoring.
Define "biggie". I realize (and agree) that 71% on card looks scary, but ONLY to you and I. The CC issuer AND FICO scoring define "biggie" as over 89.9%.
Keep every card under 90% and keep two paid in full. (zero balance).
Lots of good advice in this thread. Just a quick quesiton...
Are you asking the OP to keep 2 cards at zero because he has 5 CCs or is 2 cards at zero balance usually the magic number regardless of how many cards you have? Also, does 89% util on a card hurt your score? I thought anything over 50% util hurt your score.
Having "more than one" account report a zero balance is a positive factor and helps your score, so yes, two is the magic number.
Having your OVERALL utilization over 50% hurts your score. Having ONE card over 50% doesn't hurt it. (...or doesn't hurt it as badly?)
@tcbofade wrote:Having "more than one" account report a zero balance is a positive factor and helps your score, so yes, two is the magic number.
Having your OVERALL utilization over 50% hurts your score. Having ONE card over 50% doesn't hurt it. (...or doesn't hurt it as badly?)
Thanks for the explaination, tcbofade.
"How do you know your HELOC is being counted? I suppose it is possible that it is counting because it is only $36K. I don't know if the process that excludes HELOCs operates only by the limit of the account, or if it specifically looks to identify accounts that are HELOCs apart from also excluding high limit accounts. But I'm curious how you know it is counting in your utilization. Are you seeing utilization reported as a specific percentage on a report from myfico, or are you just seeing a comment at the end of a report that says your utilization is too high".
Since Chase denied on the original CLI, I called the backdoor number and asked if the entire balance was paid off, how likely would I be approved for a CSP. The analyst told me my HELOC was killing my utilization. CSP was my holy grail, but I am not going to bust my arse over a simple metal card. It will all come in time.
thanks beth!
@mark293 wrote:"How do you know your HELOC is being counted? I suppose it is possible that it is counting because it is only $36K. I don't know if the process that excludes HELOCs operates only by the limit of the account, or if it specifically looks to identify accounts that are HELOCs apart from also excluding high limit accounts. But I'm curious how you know it is counting in your utilization. Are you seeing utilization reported as a specific percentage on a report from myfico, or are you just seeing a comment at the end of a report that says your utilization is too high".
Since Chase denied on the original CLI, I called the backdoor number and asked if the entire balance was paid off, how likely would I be approved for a CSP. The analyst told me my HELOC was killing my utilization. CSP was my holy grail, but I am not going to bust my arse over a simple metal card. It will all come in time.
The analyst quite likely doesn't know what he/she is talking about. Have you pulled a report from myfico.com? IIRC the reports here list your utilization percentage, so you would be able to tell if it is counting the HELOC or not.
@tcbofade wrote:
@aad041109 wrote:
@tcbofade wrote:NO!
You want TWO reporting zero. That's one critical part of FICO scoring.
Define "biggie". I realize (and agree) that 71% on card looks scary, but ONLY to you and I. The CC issuer AND FICO scoring define "biggie" as over 89.9%.
Keep every card under 90% and keep two paid in full. (zero balance).
Lots of good advice in this thread. Just a quick quesiton...
Are you asking the OP to keep 2 cards at zero because he has 5 CCs or is 2 cards at zero balance usually the magic number regardless of how many cards you have? Also, does 89% util on a card hurt your score? I thought anything over 50% util hurt your score.
Having "more than one" account report a zero balance is a positive factor and helps your score, so yes, two is the magic number.
Having your OVERALL utilization over 50% hurts your score. Having ONE card over 50% doesn't hurt it. (...or doesn't hurt it as badly?)
Utilization is scored on an individual and overall basis, so yes, having one card over 50% does hurt your score. The ideal place for most people is to have all accounts but one report a $0 balance, and then have one account report 9% or less of that account's CL.
As you move up from there, you typically lose some points. Granted, it's not going to be a ton of points if your overall utilization is low, but you will lose some. Anecdotally, I've seen my score drop quite a bit when I utilized a 0% offer that put a card at above 90%. Once I got it below 80%, I gained about 30 points. Overall utilization was fairly low the whole time, so one card can make a difference.
All that was meant as clarification to the point above. The point for the OP is that if you're not planning on any major apps in the near future and you already have scores in the 720 range anyway, just do whatever is going to save you the most in interest. Once you have the accounts paid back down, your score is going to be the same no matter which route you took.
You da' man Walt!