Seems like a substantial change.
One method to test is to try to keep the 86%, zero the other cards and ask for mid-cycle updates to see what happens when you go back to AZEO.
Which cards / banks are the two smaller cards?
@Jazee wrote:I've got $50K in available credit across 4 cards. I'm practicing AZEO. My score is usually in the low-mid 700's. I just saw a 90 point drop and the only things that changed is I missed getting a payment on two cards before statement close to keep them at zero but both the balance was only 1% utilization. But the one card I'm carrying a large balance on I also forgot to make the statement close date and it closed with 86% utilization instead of 80%. The available credit on that card makes up half my total available credit so the fluctation took my total credit utilization from 35% to 45%. These all seem like not big fluctuations. But obviously not in the eyes of FICO. Is it common the combination of no longer being AZEO and going over 85% on that one card and 45% total UTI can drop a score that much? Or is it mainly the main card with large balance going over 80%? Does direction in itself of utilization over time play a roll, so going up slowly for 5 months versus going up the same total amount in one month any different for SCORE calc?
If the 80-86% change on the large balance card wouldn't usually cause a 90 point change, that backs up that the AZEO method DOES make a significant difference.
1. What FICO score dropped 90 points? It would be very rare for that kind of move on a FICO score where something huge hasn't happened.
2. Going over 85% on a single card puts it in the maxed out category, which could cause a score drop (but not 90 points, especially where the card was already reporting at 80%).
3. Practicing "AZEO" with an 80% card reporting isn't practicing AZEO at all; AZEO requires reporting only a small balance on the one card, not a huge balance.
4. Direction does not play a role; FICO does not use trend data, it's snapshot data of a specific moment in time.
5. You're over emphasizing aggregate utilization in your thinking and under estimating the importance of individual account utilization. You would do better to dispense with AZEO and make sure all your accounts report at 28% or less.
6. And aggregate utilization of 35% is not good, it's probably costing you 100 points. Aggregate utilization of 45% is, of course, even worse.
@Jazee wrote:Looks like it's some sort of glitch in Wallet Hub (one of several services I use). I should have known as I didn't get an alert from Experian. My score is only 20 pts lower than it was in January. But for some reason, Wallet Hub thought my score earlier than yesterday was 90 points higher than it really is.
What's really interesting is that Wallet Hub showed a decrease today in number of "accounts in dispute" changed from 1 yesterday to 0 today.
Looking at the account history it showed an increase in my score Jan 7 of 90 points, it remained at that score up until yesterday. Thinking well maybe Wallethub or TU disregards accounts in dispute when calculting the score. I didn't initiate any disputes in January though.
Bottom line, seems something odd went on with TU assuming WalletHub is just regurgitating the score it gets from TU (which must be the case as Wallethub doesn't calculate the score.)
As I suspected you're not referring to a FICO score at all. Wallet Hub uses Vantage 3.0 scores, not FICO scores. Vantage scores are susceptible to huge swings.
@Jazee wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Jazee wrote:I've got $50K in available credit across 4 cards. I'm practicing AZEO. My score is usually in the low-mid 700's. I just saw a 90 point drop and the only things that changed is I missed getting a payment on two cards before statement close to keep them at zero but both the balance was only 1% utilization. But the one card I'm carrying a large balance on I also forgot to make the statement close date and it closed with 86% utilization instead of 80%. The available credit on that card makes up half my total available credit so the fluctation took my total credit utilization from 35% to 45%. These all seem like not big fluctuations. But obviously not in the eyes of FICO. Is it common the combination of no longer being AZEO and going over 85% on that one card and 45% total UTI can drop a score that much? Or is it mainly the main card with large balance going over 80%? Does direction in itself of utilization over time play a roll, so going up slowly for 5 months versus going up the same total amount in one month any different for SCORE calc?
If the 80-86% change on the large balance card wouldn't usually cause a 90 point change, that backs up that the AZEO method DOES make a significant difference.
1. What FICO score dropped 90 points? It would be very rare for that kind of move on a FICO score where something huge hasn't happened.
2. Going over 85% on a single card puts it in the maxed out category, which could cause a score drop (but not 90 points, especially where the card was already reporting at 80%).
3. Practicing "AZEO" with an 80% card reporting isn't practicing AZEO at all; AZEO requires reporting only a small balance on the one card, not a huge balance.
4. Direction does not play a role; FICO does not use trend data, it's snapshot data of a specific moment in time.
5. You're over emphasizing aggregate utilization in your thinking and under estimating the importance of individual account utilization. You would do better to dispense with AZEO and make sure all your accounts report at 28% or less.
6. And aggregate utilization of 35% is not good, it's probably costing you 100 points. Aggregate utilization of 45% is, of course, even worse.
5. Very good info to know thanks. In reviewing my cards, I do see a significant higher interest rate on two of the four, I've calculated at best I can get the two remaining to around 60% uti each as opposed to 80% on one. I assume that would help the score but not by much. I opened two new cards and sold and bought a new car last Summer so my average age of accounts plummeted. That combined with some <12 month hard inquiries and then having to run up a balance on one card combined, took my score down 90 pts, which I was expecting. I don't need to finance anything like a home or another car, etc for at least a couple years so I figured to just not worry about the score hit as it will gradually come back as I get more payment history on the new accounts, the average age of accounts goes up, and the hard pulls roll off. This was all a calculated decision last Summer. The goofy 90pt notification just took me by surprise but as I mentioned looks like some sort of glitch with TU.
If I don't need to finance anything for the next two years now I'm wondering if splitting the balance between two cards is even worth it. I may be moving in 6 months though and I will rent in the new city first two years to make sure I like living there so I'll need to meet minimum credit score for that and then I think the local cable companies also pull your credit score but if I recall the minimum score for those two things is typically lower than most low interest revolving accounts and mortgage requirements?
With things like that coming up I think you would do well to work on score improvement.