Credit Card Utilization: What is ideal?

[Anonymous]

Greetings Community,

What is the ideal credit card utilization?  Is this % of utilization per card or of total credit card debt?

Any insight on this would be helpful.

Thanks!

[takeshi74]

General recommendation for ekeing out every possible point is allow only one balance to report at 10% or less.

The specific percentage varies and you'd have to test and monitor to find your specific ideal point.  Both individual and overall utilization matter but the recommendation above is referring to individual.

Personally, I don't find the gain worthwhile to micromanage and my limits and spend typically place me at about 13% which is fine with me from looking at the effects on my scores.  YMMV.

[lhcole77]

Ideal can be different for different people. Score is based off of individual utilization for card and aggregate utilization across all cards.

Most will say to let all cards report a 0 balance except for one. Let that report 9% or less.

Welcome to the Forums!

[Creditaddict]

best util. is 9% or less on any given card AND lets say you have 3 cards, only 1 of the 3 cards actually reporting a balance on any given month.

However if you are not getting ready to apply for something the individual util. won't matter as long as you pay on time and don't go over the limit and then 1 month before you need to apply for something just pay the balances down and off and let it update to credit report as it has no memory.

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone...I just paid off all my cards but one which has a 2,000 limit...I currently owe 1700.00 on that one card so I hope paying off everything now did not hurt me.

[kdm31091]

For every single possible point you want 1 to 9 percent reporting on one card and the rest zero.

However unless you're planning a lot of apps it really is not worth going crazy micromanaging it. Utilization is one thing your score has absolutely no memory of. Generally staying under 20 to 30 percent is fine.

[Anonymous]

85% utilization on one card is hurting you a lot more than paying off your other cards will. If you've been carrying that balance, I wouldn't worry about "ideal" utilization until you get it paid off.