@Aiyvega wrote:Quick question, I know I read on here somewhere that fico scores are triggered when your utilization is below 90%, 70%, 50%, 30% and 10%. My question is, do those thresholds only apply to individual credit cards or your overall utilization across your revolving credit?
My personal belief is that there are no specific thresholds for aggregate revolving utilization.
For individual revolving account utilization I am certain that below 30% and below 50% are thresholds.
@FicoMike0 wrote:If there are no specific thresholds, are the dependent on something else?
No, aggregate revolving utilization is a major factor. The lower it is, the better. The higher it is, the worse. It's just that IMHO the changes are gradual. By "threshold" I mean a particular number at which there is a substantial gain or loss.
E.g., in aggregate installment utilization, I have found that in my profile, getting below 10% was worth 32 points in FICO 8. Now that's a threshold. 11%... nothing. 9%... gain 32 points.
IMHO there is nothing like that in the aggregate revolving utilization world. If I went from 11% to 9% I might gain 3 points.
The reason I preface my statement with "IMHO" is that I am aware that there are those who disagree with me, and think there are defined thresholds. But they have never demonstrated it to my satisfaction.
@DebbsSeattle wrote:Working on "Project Clean Slate" since October. I have probably taken too much of everyone's advice here on myFico too much as gospel, but it all seems to be working as expected...rather like a diet...eat less move more lose weight. Or in this financial equation...spend less, pay more, reduce debt.
I had one 0% Bal Transfer card that I made one big pymt on and just cycled from 99% utilization to that magic 88.9% as it reported. This is the only change occurring on myFico 3B daily alerts in either direction for 2 days +/-. My Equifax and Experian jumped 12 pts and Transunion jumped 17 pts. This big pymt did not reduce my aggregate to any magic number and is still blurred in the same 44%-47% window. All other accounts are =/< 68.9% of credit limit. I have no way of re-testing this to prove it out.
End of last week, I had one Acc't report from 8.9% to zero PIF. They all gave me one point. Two days prior another card reported from 8.9% to PIF zero...also one pt @@each bureau. Lastly, no specific data to note, but rather several times of seeing an Acc't drop from one tier (88.9, 68.9, 48.9, 28.9, 8.9) to the next and seeing 1 point gains. It is my belief that there is something magic with these individual until tiers. I will be anxiously awaiting the day where my aggregate drops from above to below 28.9% to see if there is magic in that hypothesis.
The next big pt jump I expect is on or about Jan 25, I will have 6/11 revolvers report as PIF zero. This is a magic number I have read about having 50%+ as Zero Balances. This should be an isolated event too that will hopefully occur without any other superfluous events blurring the lines.
As a side note, I have been paying all Acc't's across the board, with the intent of trying to bring each individual utilization down one tier at a time, in rather equal succession...everyone is coming down at equal rates, everyone is getting their slice of my darned pie every month. They are paying off in full "naturally" albeit accelerated this way. So far so good, no balance chasing occurring, and I am even getting cli's approved that were previously getting turned down. It was very hard to not pay off all the small ones straight away, but has also allowed me to rather painlessly tackle the big ones too.
Congratulations on the good progress you are making.
28.9% will not be a big "magic number" for aggregate utilization, but on individual accounts it will be.