EX jumped 50 points!! :)

[FirstAscent]

First off, hello! 

I've recently signed up for the 3 bureau monitoring to help rebuild my credit. I've some missed payments and collections in the past that have all been taken care of now, except one collection left but I still can't decide whether to pay it or not since it won't affect my score. But I might in case it helps with getting new credit.

Anyways, on to the good stuff, when I first signed up a couple/few weeks ago my scores were, EQ 616, TU 614, EX 585. So as you can see I have some work to do. I disputed a bunch of stuff hoping for the best but either no changes were made or in fact my EQ dropped a few points I think they added a missed payment from a few years ago that wasn't there previously. 

I have one credit card with Wells Fargo, started out as the secured card then graduated to the regular/platinum card, currently have an $1800 limit. It looks like WF reports after statement close from what I can see, and my utilization was pretty high at that exact moment, ~92%. So I paid it down to 50% and watched my scores at statement close a few days ago. My EX jumped exactly 50 points! so yeah, I'm pretty excited and it's now at 635. And even better, the simulator estimated at that utilization my score would "only" jump 30 points, which I still would've been stoked about. 

so I'm going to pay it down to about 3% utilization for next statement close and watch it some more to see what happens. Doesn't look like it's shown up on EQ or TU yet so I'm hoping I see a point increase there as well once it does, although I don't expect another 50 points =)

I know there are a lot of factors so obviously not everyone would see the same results but goes to show that utilization is in fact a big factor. and it's the one easy thing I can control with a relatively quick payback as opposed to everything else which will just take time continuing to be good with my payments etc.

There's so much good info on here and I've been reading a lot, so thank you all for this great community. Excited to grow my credit to a better state!

[Anonymous]

Utilization is a huge factor, as it comprises roughly 1/3 of your credit score. 

If you have just 1 revolver, the impact to this 1/3 of the FICO pie is magnified greatly compared to someone that may have a ton of revolving accounts.  Aggregate utilization is King to individual card utilization, but with just 1 revolver your individual card utilization is your aggregate utilization.  It's not uncommon to see a 100 point swing in going from maxed out utilization to ideal utilization, so taking your ~50% utilization down to single-digit [ideal] utilization could theoretically yield you another 50 FICO points.

[FirstAscent]

Thanks! It was my assumption that it was based on aggregate utilization and as you said since I have just one then that IS it. I can't wait for next month to see what the impact is, I'm pretty sure I can pay it down to around 3% by then.

[Anonymous]

I think you'll be very happy with your score improvement once you do.

[Gidgetmom]

Congratulations!  You’re on the right track now!

[FirstAscent]

annnd of course today a "new" collection showed up on EX dropping it 12 points, what the heck. This is an old collection and it says it will come off in June of 2019. However, I remember this collection and I've disputed it before a year or two ago, I don't remember which bureau it was but it was removed from that report at that time. I just disputed it again so we'll see what happens, hopefully it goes off. 

On a positive note, the updated utilization finally hit EQ and TU as well, EQ went up 22 points and TU went up 26 points.

[909]

Well done. You’re building your knowledge base. Some things I learn in the credit score arena make sense and others seem odd. Bottom-line is that you’re learning how to control your credit scores. Keep up the good work!

[FirstAscent]

Thanks! Knowledge is power right? Haha, I’ve been learning a lot and am definitely learning more. It just makes me want to continue to grow my score more and more, can’t wait!