Credit Utilization %

[Anonymous]

I have a question, my score did not move last month and my utilization was at 4%, what will happen if i let it go up to 7% or 8% utilization? please advice.

Thanks,

Adrian

[gdale6]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have a question, my score did not move last month and my utilization was at 4%, what will happen if i let it go up to 7% or 8% utilization? please advice.

Thanks,

Adrian

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Its possible you would see a decrease in score or perhaps none at all. If you are trying to maximize the score you need to move the perentage you let report on 1 card between 1 and 9 % and see where your sweet spot actually is and it can change over time as well.

[Anonymous]

I only let one card report, that was my question; if i should let that card report a little more since last month my score did not go up at all. 

[Gunnar419]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I only let one card report, that was my question; if i should let that card report a little more since last month my score did not go up at all. 

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It's as gdale says, though. For some people one card at 1% gives them the highest score. For somebody else it might be one card at 9%. For somebody else, 4 or 5 or 6%. Everybody has to experiment to find their own "sweet spot."

Keep us posted, though. Data always helps.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have a question, my score did not move last month and my utilization was at 4%, what will happen if i let it go up to 7% or 8% utilization? please advice.

Thanks,

Adrian

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If you keep the same number of cards reporting a non zero balance, then odds are no score change. However another poster's data (Inverse) indicated that a few (3 to 5 points as I recall) were gained when aggregate utilization dropped from the 8% to 9% level to the 4% to 5% level. So possibly under 6% may help some profiles.

Another potential hit is if your increase in utilization is associated with an increase in # cards reporting a balance. The effect of this factor is profile dependent. If you have 3 to 5 cards and increase # reporting from 1 => 2 or from 2 => 3, then you could lose 4 to 7 points (again data from Inverse 4 to 5 months ago and I am going from memory).

Go ahead, give it a try but keep # cards reporting the same to isolate factor. There are no long term implications with utilization as scoring models only use last computed utilization in score calculations.

Let us know what happens.