UTL

[Anonymous]

A couple of questionns about utilization. 

1. When is utilization reported to the CRAs? 

2. What does the <9% utilization mean? Is that per card or total? 

And any other tips about utilization you can think of would be awesome. 

Cheers! 

[tcbofade]

Your balance and credit limit are reported every month when your statement cuts...from that, your util rate is figured.

Under 9 percent total seems to be ideal.

If possible, have several cards report 0, and one card reporting "less than 9%" of it's credit limit.

[LS2982]

Util. is the percentage your current balance divided by your CL creates. As you gain more cards, those CL's are added up. Any balances on the cards add up into one amount as well and is divided by your CL total and that creates "overall util.". your overall util. is what you want to keep at 1-9%. If you have multiple cards, 1 card needs to carry a smal 1-9% balance and all others PIF.

[Anonymous]

Utilization is not something that is reported per se to the bureaus. It is simply your percentage of the use of your individual credit cards to their total available credit, as well as the total percentage use of your total available credit.

As such that is a number that changes based on both usage and credit limit changes. You will see those changes each time a creditor reports you to the agencies. That is different for every card usually.

The getting under 9% gets you to where you will see the highest score impact. Ideally you should pay most cards to zero and let a small balance run on a card or two.