Aggregate revolving vs each trade line

[CreditBob]

Compared to the aggregate revolving utilization overall, how much influence would one credit card have with a high balance with a total of 5 credit cards as far as hiw much it would affect the FICO scores?

[Brian_Earl_Spilner]

It's an impossible question to answer as everyone will get different results. If your question is just in general, both aggregate and individual utilization have the same thresholds. So aggeegate can only be dinged once as overall utilization climbs while each card will be dinged separately as they climb and you'll get dinged again as you cross aggregate thresholds. Depending on the bureau, you'll be dinged again on aggregate depending on what percentage of cards are carrying a balance. On top of that, you'll also be dinged for carrying a balance on more than one card. How much you'll get dinged is what's impossible to answer as it depends on your profile. 

[pizzadude]

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@CreditBob wrote:

Compared to the aggregate revolving utilization overall, how much influence would one credit card have with a high balance with a total of 5 credit cards as far as hiw much it would affect the FICO scores?

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Not sure there's a way to answer this other than it depends on the CLs involved.   A maxed out card is bad, but not as bad as 5 maxed out cards unless that one maxed out card results in maxing the overall utilization.

[SouthJamaica]

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@CreditBob wrote:

Compared to the aggregate revolving utilization overall, how much influence would one credit card have with a high balance with a total of 5 credit cards as far as hiw much it would affect the FICO scores?

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There is an important threshold for individual card utilization -- 28%.  I have found that if no single account is above 28% utilization, my scores will be decent.

For aggregate utilization, from my experience, there are no real "thresholds", just a basic principle that anything over 3 to 6% starts getting penalties. Although I do not believe there are any specific "thresholds", I can tell you that in my profile at 28% aggregate utilization I would be losing a lot of points.

If I had a choice between (a) maxing out a single account while the others report zero and (b) having the balance spread out over 4 or 5 cards with none exceeding 28%, I would normally choose (b).  But this is for the FICO 8's and 9's.

I have found that in the mortgage scores, a very high premium is placed on having mostly zero balances. Although I wouldn't max out any account, I might be willing to let one or two drift up to 48% in the interest of letting some others rest at zero, if I were trying to pretty up my mortgage scores.

[CorpCrMgr1]

Definitely agree! 

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@CreditBob wrote:

Compared to the aggregate revolving utilization overall, how much influence would one credit card have with a high balance with a total of 5 credit cards as far as hiw much it would affect the FICO scores?

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As others have said, impact depends on your scorecard assignment AND the specific Fico model.

I happen to have 5 credit cards and 1 AU card. My Fico EQ mortgage score starts getting dinged when more than 3 report balances. The negative impact is severe when 5 of 6 or 6 of 6 report balances regardless of the amount owed. Conversely, impact of most/all cards reporting is small on EQ Fico 8 and EQ Fico 9.

Fico looks at all your cards and dings score based on the card with the highest percent utilization. Each card is not a utilization ding dong scorewise. It is the highest that matters. If you have multiple cards with high utilizations, that is picked up and penalized from aggregate utilization.

Let's assume you have 5 cards with similar CLs. In all scorecards with all Fico models it would be better to have 2 cards report 45% utilization than 1 card report 90 % utilization.

In contrast, if all 5 cards were reporting 40% utilization you would likely have better Fico mortgage scores if 3 cards were reporting higher utilization of 64% and 2 were reporting $0. With Fico 8 and Fico 9 the best option is to keep all cards under 49% UT even though all cards are reporting balances.