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So, I have a 0% offer on my Platinum right now that has about 40% utilization on it, with it being the only card that will be reporting a balance as of next month and planning from here on out. I need to make 1 more purchase that will either add about 5% more to that or have a 2nd card report 15ish% instead. I don't plan on doing anything any time soon other than a CLI here and there. I realize that the score doesn't really matter that much since I have no intentions of anything new anytime soon, but would still like to minimize damage here. From what I gather, having the 2nd card report will probably cost around 5 points in a perfect world (I believe anyways). Not sure what having just 1 report 45% instead of 40% would do, if anything. Just not sure which scenario would be better here.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
An individual card going from 40% to 45% utilization would likely have no impact on FICO score based on the individual card utilization, but you need to consider your before/aggregate utilization with the 5% increase... which would of course be the same change whether you increase that one card 5% or put those dollars across multiple cards. Aggregate utilization is King to individual card utilization.
What you need to consider if deciding to take on another "account with a balance" is how many accounts with a balance (and percentage) you have before/after adding 1 more. If it's a significant change, (say) going from 2 out of 5 total accounts to 3 out of 5 total accounts it would be more meaningful than if you had 20 open accounts and were going from 2 out of 20 to 3 out of 20. Just something to keep in mind.
@Anonymous wrote:An individual card going from 40% to 45% utilization would likely have no impact on FICO score based on the individual card utilization, but you need to consider your before/aggregate utilization with the 5% increase... which would of course be the same change whether you increase that one card 5% or put those dollars across multiple cards. Aggregate utilization is King to individual card utilization.
What you need to consider if deciding to take on another "account with a balance" is how many accounts with a balance (and percentage) you have before/after adding 1 more. If it's a significant change, (say) going from 2 out of 5 total accounts to 3 out of 5 total accounts it would be more meaningful than if you had 20 open accounts and were going from 2 out of 20 to 3 out of 20. Just something to keep in mind.
Ok, thanks! I know for the most part, aggregate utilization plays the larger role. Just read something on here while trying to figure this out, that each card reporting a balance tends to hit ya for a handful of points at the very least. So wasn't sure if that was still entirely accurate and/or if there would actually be any difference between 40 and 45, since it seems like the next marker is 50ish%(+).
It's going to be going from 5 with a balance to X (either the 1 or 2) with about 7-8% aggregate out of 12 open cards. So, my aggregate will still be in a good place. So would be 2/10, which is a bit worse off than 3/20 from your scenario. So thinking that the 1 would be better?
It honestly probably doesn't matter with your profile, so I'd just roll with whatever you feel most comfortable with. Any point difference if there is even one would be a few points at most, definitely nothing to worry about.
@Anonymous wrote:It honestly probably doesn't matter with your profile, so I'd just roll with whatever you feel most comfortable with. Any point difference if there is even one would be a few points at most, definitely nothing to worry about.
Ok, ty!