Just a question about how much of a point increase will i see if lowering my utilization thresholds overall and individually. 4 out of my 6 cards are under 10%, my Discover Chrome is around 12% and my Chase Freedom Flex is high around 69% because i have 0% interest until April 2023 and had put big expenses on it. I know i can see a couple points gained from bringing it down atleast 49% but definately 29%/9% is the target. My overall is only 15% currently and Credit Karma says on average its a 5+ point gain when a card drops >10%.
@Mdowning30 wrote:Just a question about how much of a point increase will i see if lowering my utilization thresholds overall and individually. 4 out of my 6 cards are under 10%, my Discover Chrome is around 12% and my Chase Freedom Flex is high around 69% because i have 0% interest until April 2023 and had put big expenses on it. I know i can see a couple points gained from bringing it down atleast 49% but definately 29%/9% is the target. My overall is only 15% currently and Credit Karma says on average its a 5+ point gain when a card drops >10%.
Don't believe the hype unfortunately CK is very much mistaken on that one.
Aggregate is where it's at, I did have a 14 point gain on EQ FICO 5 back in the day for 10% aggregate on a dirty scorecard, I can't conceivably test aggregate anymore but it very much depends on your current scorecard. You're not in a bad place currently but less is better both financially and FICO wise.
Overall util probably matters more than individual util %. And number of cards reporting a balance can be a pretty big factor. I think you'll see a bigger increase from paying off a couple of the smallest ones, rather than lowering the largest one.
@Mdowning30 wrote:Just a question about how much of a point increase will i see if lowering my utilization thresholds overall and individually. 4 out of my 6 cards are under 10%, my Discover Chrome is around 12% and my Chase Freedom Flex is high around 69% because i have 0% interest until April 2023 and had put big expenses on it. I know i can see a couple points gained from bringing it down atleast 49% but definately 29%/9% is the target. My overall is only 15% currently and Credit Karma says on average its a 5+ point gain when a card drops >10%.
You have to decide what your priority is: saving money or improving your credit score. If the credit scores are your priority, your focus should be on getting the Chase Freedom Flex down to 28% and then paying some of your other accounts down to zero. You will get more points from getting a 69% card down to a 28% card than from anything else you could do.
What CK tells you about scores is meaningless.
Anyone who tells you that overall utilization is more important than individual account utilization is wrong.
I know you think overall utilization of 15% is good, but it's not great, and leaves a lot of room for improvement. Ideal aggregate utilization is below 6%. And the larger the number of zero balance accounts, the better.
I think when that was posted (Thomas Thumb IIRC) it had a disclaimer that it was illustrative, but it looks close to accurate if you ignore the diagonal lines. Utilization is all breakpoints so it looks like a step function.