@AndySoCal wrote:
Simple My FICO credit report says my credit utilzation is X%. The same report said the total revolving debt was Y amount. If you take x and diviide into Y it will give the approximate amount that the X is a percentage of. If the resulting amount is higher than your total credit limits you know that a balance has been excluded. In my case you had to use open account balance amount. Simply put you could not get to X% without that balance being included it was about 25% or more of my total balnces. The high balance amount was not being included in the total credit limits on the open account.. I am of the opinion based the high balance amount is never included the FICO credit utilzation. I also think it is not a misquote. Since this website is being co-sponsered by FICO you should be able to FICO support a simple question. As far as that card that is NPSL it will be closed it the reporting of the credit limit is not changed.
Okay, so I did understand your earlier post correctly. As I illustrated in my earlier response, this can be a very poor approximation of the actual credit limits used to calculate one's utilization.
Speaking in generalities is perhaps not an effective way to discuss this confusing topic. So I'll illustrate what I'm actually seeing on my credit reports.
Again, I will reiterate that when it comes to "open" accounts, TU98 uses the high balance (if reported) as a surrogate for credit limit, and the balance and high balance will both be used in utilization. If neither a CL or a high balance is reported, then the account is excluded from utilization.
For EQ, since it is a newer version of FICO, all "open" accounts are excluded from utilization, regardless of whether a high balance or credit limit is reported.
So, here's my situation.
Last fall, I pulled both TU and EQ on the same day.
The total revolving balance was $2677.
Of this, $1932 were on my two Chase cards. These are "open" accounts. Their actual credit limits total $29,500, which is not reported. Their combined high balances are $9799.
Both TU and EQ have the same accounts - thus the same total credit limits. On TU, since it is an older version of FICO, to calculate utilization it will use the balances on all my accounts, including the "open" Chase accounts. It will use the CLs on my other cards, plus the high balance amounts for the Chase accounts, which equals a combined credit limit of $68,600.
$2677 / $68,600 = 4% utilization, which is exactly what appears on my TU report.
So the TU report makes sense. It's an older version of FICO, and thus uses the current balance and past high balance of this open account.
Now let's look at my EQ utilization.
As I mentioned above, in the newer versions of FICO - which includes the EQ score here - open accounts are excluded from utilization altogether. It doesn't matter whether it reports a CL or a high balance. If it's an open account, it's excluded from utilization.
Most of my revolving debt was on my two "open" Chase accounts. Only $745 was on my other credit cards. The total credit limits of my other credit cards - excluding both the actual CLs AND the high balance of the Chase accounts - is $58,801.
$745 / $58,801 = 1% utilization. This is exactly what appears on my EQ report from the same day.
So, in my case it's pretty evident that the balances on my "open" accounts are excluded from the calculation of utilization. There's no way that it could be. Even if my total true CLs were used to calculate utilization, this would come out to:
$2677 / $88,301 = 3% utilization.
The only possible way for EQ to come up with with a utilization of 1% would be to exclude the balance on my "open" accounts. So at least in my case, the theory that open accounts are excluded from utilization - their balance, credit limit, and high balance - is supported.
Starting Score: EQ 737--TU 742