@Anonymous wrote:
Is utilization based on overall balances to credit limits or is it an average of each card individually?
Also, if a credit card account is open with no balance, does the credit limit count in utilization or do you have to have a balance on it?
Both. But when people talk about utilization(UTL) it is all cards combined. If you have 4 cards with $500 Credit Line(CL) each your total available credit is $2000. If you use only 1 card the other 3 are still counted towards total UTL. On a separate issue when you talk about UTL for each card it is more about coming close to maxing it out. I wouldn't worry so much about UTL per card, just mostly total UTL using all CLs combined. However, I would use a second card before you reach 90% of your limit on one card.
