path to disaster/ getting flagged?

[Anonymous]

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@taxi818 wrote:
Well since utilization is 30 percent of fico score. I'm surprised it's not mentioned more often. It's a constant changing thing. Not by much. Always. 9-11 percent. Month to month. As trying to max score. Can't mention payment history. Which is 35 percent of fico. Because most are at 100 percent in time. What. AAoA also mentioned quite frequently. 15%. There you go. Credit mix. Rarely. And credit age. Rarely. Always understand what is most important here. Not balances. But effect on fico score. Mostly. You got it. Utilization.

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Overall Utilization =/= Individual Utilization. Next!

[taxi818]

I tend to focus on overall. However discover card is at 33%. 0%apr. no more spend on that puppy. To minimize chance of interest.

[Anonymous]

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@taxi818 wrote:
I tend to focus on overall. However discover card is at 33%. 0%apr. no more spend on that puppy. To minimize chance of interest.

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We are off topic but to that end, It seems largely misunderstood that individual utilization hurts more than overall utilization. It's like putting a loincloth on a sumo wrestler and expecting it not to come off.

[Anonymous]

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@core wrote:

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Anyway myjourney-  Yes "95%" was an assumption.  It may be closer to 80% of the threads.  My metric was the one I gave:  Look at all the threads about closing a card and see how many where any ONE person mentioned util%.  And no, it's not some troll over and over.

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Perhaps it's because utilization is a major part of your score. It just so happens to also be one of the only parts of a score that you can easily manipulate on a month-to-month basis.

We're not currently sitting on our balances making sure that they report at zero on the statement date. However, come November and every month thereafter, we will be. Why? We plan on applying for a mortgage in February. I want to make sure that we have a good couple months lead for everything to report properly and with good utilization before we apply.

When you use your cards as we do...like a debit card, then you're constantly running the balances up and back down again. Our utilization last last month was at 85%. Whatever. We always pay the balance in full within 24 hours of the balance reporting on the account. (Usually, it's the same day the balance reports.)

Will you hear me asking about ideal utilization for ideal scoring? You bet. Does that mean we're in debt or misusing credit? Nope. Not even close. Quite the opposite, in fact. (Which is a huge part of why our scores were in the toilet. We were a "cash-only" family.)