Credit Card Utilization Question

[credit911]

I have a question about credit bureaus and how they use utilization to determine your score. I am trying to recover from my chapter 7 BK that was discharged in Nov 07. I have received my first CC since then. It is a Orchard Bank secure card for $200. For the first few months I was keeping utilization around 10 to 15 percent. I have had some car trouble and needed to use my credit card to get the car fixed. That took my card up to $180. I know the high utilization will have a negative effect on my score, but I will have it paid back down within the next 2 or 3 months back to 10 percent or so. Will the low utilization be reflected in my score immediately or will I have to keep it there for a certain amount of time before I will get those points back? Thanks for the time!

[Creditaddict]

each month your credit card gets reported to the credit agency's. most at the same time as they send you statement, as soon as you get a statement with less than 10% util. that is the same point that will be reflected on credit.

you will see a slight dip in score when the hight util hits but will come back just as fast when you pay it down. 

[Anonymous]

Also worth noting is the fact that many HSBC (Orchard's parent company) cards report the balance at the end of the month, versus the statement date.

Whatever day you choose to pull your scores, it's just a snapshot of what's going on on that particular day.  CRAs have no memory of what your util looked like on the previous month -- in other words it's not about a trend, but rather a glimpse.  (The only memory they have is what has been reported by the card issuer -- high balance, balance, any lates/derog status msgs, etc.)

[Logical]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Whatever day you choose to pull your scores, it's just a snapshot of what's going on on that particular day.  CRAs have no memory of what your util looked like on the previous month -- in other words it's not about a trend, but rather a glimpse.  (The only memory they have is what has been reported by the card issuer -- high balance, balance, any lates/derog status msgs, etc.)

---

True, FICO has no memory, just a snapshot. Not so sure about the CRAs though. I've received credit reports that had the history of the credit line increases going back a long time. I do know that at least some credit card companies keep track of my utilization with other ccc cards going back several months because they told me that, and the information they gave was accurate. I would assume a lot of them do this. With computers it is easy.

Be safe, it's tought out there

[Anonymous]

---

Logical wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Whatever day you choose to pull your scores, it's just a snapshot of what's going on on that particular day.  CRAs have no memory of what your util looked like on the previous month -- in other words it's not about a trend, but rather a glimpse.  (The only memory they have is what has been reported by the card issuer -- high balance, balance, any lates/derog status msgs, etc.)

---

True, FICO has no memory, just a snapshot. Not so sure about the CRAs though. I've received credit reports that had the history of the credit line increases going back a long time. I do know that at least some credit card companies keep track of my utilization with other ccc cards going back several months because they told me that, and the information they gave was accurate. I would assume a lot of them do this. With computers it is easy.

Be safe, it's tought out there

---

Very good point -- I notice this on EX when I pull directly from them.  I was just thinking about how what the CRAs reference in order to generate a score, not necessarily all of the info that they have on hand.