What is your credit card utilization

[credit_endurance]

Great Topic by the way... I am currently hovering around 5% utilization out of around $500k personal TL’s. That seems to be my sweet spot for maintaining the fico scores. I have applied for SEVERAL cards lately to pick up the SUBs especially during the holiday season. Will let those cards report balances but only under 29% threshold and pay them off closer to the promo ending period as Gmood mentioned earlier in the thread. 

Business TL’s always carry a balance which makes them the ace-in-the-hole. Currently utilization around 8-10% on those hence..the “hidden gems”.😁 

Havent experienced a “major” emergency in this life yet and pray that I never will. But I do feel more comfortable knowing that if a need arise it’s there and if have to use it, do so and let the chips fall where they may. 

[kerplunk]

7% utilization currently.

BTW, for those worried about major life expenses, as long as you have umbrella insurance (very cheap... $1 million policy for $275/year) and health insurance with no lifetime or annual limits, you will be fine.

[Anonymous]

I'm at 6%. 

$8,754 out of $155,400

$5994 of that is on a Wells Fargo Home Projects Charge Card for a new Trane Heat Pump a while back. I didn't do enough research beforehand and believed the salesman when he said it was an installment loan. Nope, it reports as a revolving credit card. 

[HeavenOhio]

Welcome, @Anonymous.

If your heating contractor would have offered installment loans, chances are that you would have been offered a "consumer finance loan." They're loans from companies other than banks. And because consumer finance companies tend to be lienient about credit requirements, these loans hurt FICO scores.

In the short term, the utilization on a credit card can cause a larger scoring ding than a new loan would. In the longer term, the credit card will be paid off and you'll be ahead of where you would have been with a consumer finance loan.

[Credit-hoarder]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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I look at it this way: If my heat pump & furnace blow (and oh please heat pump don't be reading my mind) 

It would cost me about $12000 ish to replace both. Better to put that on a $25,000. card, cause I would need to carry a balance for a bit.    

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Good example and one that I agree with and can identify with.  I need about $15k of work done on my house than can wait no longer than the upcoming spring to deal with.  I've wrestled with going the home equity loan route, scooping up a 0% card route, or just using a CC.  I'm likely going to go the CC route since I do have high enough limits to absorb it and because I have the cash to pay it off quickly.  If I had low limits I'd have to max out my card(s) to accomplish this, dropping my FICO scores 70-100 points in the process.

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I'm  in the same situation. I'm looking at some major home repair and remodeling coming up hopefully within the next year or two. I also have enough cash to where I could put the whole thing on CC and pay it back relatively quick. So what I'd probably do in that situation in my specific case is grab a max of 2 cards with a good SUB, meet the spend and grab the rewards--and put the rest on existing cards in my collection that have decent rewards. I.E. 2% or better. At this point in my credit journey it's all about the SUBs and rewards--not about high CLs--that part I've already mostly achieved.

[RonM21]

1% Utilization on 192.1K total credit. I currently have 2.1k reporting on my NFCU account.