DROPPED 27 POINTS!!!!

[Anonymous]

I was moving along fine until I decided to consolidate 2 account balances and took a hit.  Going up is slow as molasses but going down is like a lead balloon.  What gives, my credit balances overall are lower.  should I move 10% of the last amount I consolidated to an account showing "0" balance and would that take my score higher???  This is freaking rollercoaster.  Need explanations from anybody.  MY target is to take this FICO to 723 but just as I got to 702 I got dropped again.

[Anonymous]

What kind of accounts did you consolidate?  Credit cards?  Installment loans?

Did the consolidation result in a single account with very high utilization, even though your overall utilization may still be low?

[Anonymous]

I took 2 credit cards with bal of 1500 and another 2500 into a 5k lim account.  Should I move the 2500 to another account with 0% with an existing 0 balance on 18k lim??

[Anonymous]

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berlinnet wrote:

I took 2 credit cards with bal of 1500 and another 2500 into a 5k lim account.  Should I move the 2500 to another account with 0% with an existing 0 balance on 18k lim??

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There's your answer.  You now have $4K / $5K on one CC.  That's 80% utilization on that account.

One account at 80% will hurt, even if overall utilization is still relatively low.

Moving $2500 to a different account with an $18K CL will help as far as FICO is concerned, but keep in mind that you'll likely have to pay BT fees to do it.  Seeing how the amount is relatively small, I don't know that it would be worth it.

Will you need to get those extra FICO points back before you can pay off the $2500?  If not, I wouldn't worry about it.

[Anonymous]

So it is all about util levels.   I guess I will continue to pay down the CC with 4k bal.  Here we go again, the crawling upwards point by point.  I took the consolidation because the cc did not charge transfer fees.  Does it matter if you have 4 cc with utils at 10%?

[Anonymous]

When the other cc that went down to 0 reports to the credit bureau, should the FICO number go up correspondingly? you would think, right?

[Anonymous]

Revolving utility is weighed in two equal parts - overall revolving utility and individual utility. Also in there is the # of accounts reporting a balance.

Thus 10% utility is good but not great (under 9% is better), and the number of accounts is likely high unless you have 10 revolving accounts or more. 1-2 revolving accounts reporting a balance is best for most people - but don't kill yourself to get to that number if you can't financially.

In overall utility - it doesn't matter where you put your balance, but on the individual utility side, if you moved most of your balances to one card it would ding you for having bad individual utility on one card, which is likely where most of those 27 points came from.

[haulingthescoreup]

Here's what can affect scoring:

Overall util, and it goes by tiers rather than by individual changes. So no change to go from 14% to 13%, but there should be a change if you go from 10% to 9%. Your util has to cross one of these break points. Where exactly these break points are get debated a lot. I'm guessing under (not at!) 10%, maybe under 20%, under 30%, under 50%, under maxed. Once I moved into the 19+ years score bucket, I got points for moving from 8% to 7%, which happens to be that FICO High Achiever util that you see. I never saw that before going 19+ years.

Individual util, especially if you max out a card (85 - 90% of that card's credit limit.)

Number of accounts (not just CC's) reporting balances. If you can get some $0's in there, it starts to help.

[marty56]

9% for me.  Nothing for going less other than peace at home.

[Anonymous]

I now have 2 cc reporting balances.  I tried to consolidate to prevent inadvertent missed payments but once I hit 702 I was cut back 27 points.  good thing is, the 0 balance on the new account brought up the score by 10 points.  New score 690!!!!

I am getting a bit frustrated.