FICO 8 breakpoints for total utilization and individual card utilization

[NYC_Fella]

Can someone remind me what they are? I seem to remember 5% and 30% but I'm not entirely sure.

[SouthJamaica]

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@NYC_Fella wrote:

Can someone remind me what they are? I seem to remember 5% and 30% but I'm not entirely sure.

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Despite the many posts stating that there are breakpoints for aggregate revolving utilization, in my opinion there are no specific thresholds for aggregate utilization.

For individual card utilization 2 clear thresholds are below 30% and below 50%, and by below, I mean below. 30% isn't good. 28% is good. 50% is bad. 48% is less bad.

[NYC_Fella]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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For individual card utilization 2 clear thresholds are below 30% and below 50%, and by below, I mean below. 30% isn't good. 28% is good. 50% is bad. 48% is less bad.

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Thanks. So just to be clear, if my overall utilization in around 3% and my utilization on my lowest CL goes up to 28%, that would not have much of an adverse impact?

[JoeRockhead]

Aggregate usage should be taken with a grain of salt. To me, it's much more important to keep individual card reported balances in check. It really depends on your file as to how much your score is affected. Someone on a clean scorecard with 28% usage on a single card will experience less of an impact to their scores. Someone on a dirty scorecard would be score more harshly (dirty would be 60 day lates, or worse on reports). 

[pi-r-squared]

This is a helpful post....

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/The-Truth-about-Credit-Card-Utilization/...

[SouthJamaica]

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@NYC_Fella wrote:

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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For individual card utilization 2 clear thresholds are below 30% and below 50%, and by below, I mean below. 30% isn't good. 28% is good. 50% is bad. 48% is less bad.

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Thanks. So just to be clear, if my overall utilization in around 3% and my utilization on my lowest CL goes up to 28%, that would not have much of an adverse impact?

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Correct, that would have little or no adverse impact.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@NYC_Fella wrote:

Can someone remind me what they are? I seem to remember 5% and 30% but I'm not entirely sure.

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Like it or not, aggregate utilization impacts score more than individual card utilization. Also, clean scorecards are impacted more than dirty scorecards and new credit/thin scorecards are more sensitive than established/thick scorecards.

What are the thresholds? For aggregate utilization 5%, 9% and 29% are a few. I get a brutal drop in score when aggregate goes above 9% - but no change at 5%. Likely this depends on scorecard.

For individual utilization - Fico looks at highest level of utilization on all your cards and scores accordingly. Really not much/any impact under 29% individually. A couple important thresholds are 29% and 49%. Also, 80% is considered max out territory so stay below that ... Unless you don't care about score drop and feel compelled to take advantage of a 0% apr promo.

For now, %/# of cards reporting balances is an important consideration because the older Fico algorithms used for mortgage applications are hyper sensitive to that metric. Starting next year algorithms using trended data will be used for mortgages. With those models # accounts with balances is meh.

Not sure about Fico 10T and Vantagescore 4.0 utilization thresholds. Best I could tell is that VS 3.0 didnot have step change thresholds for aggregate. I suspect VS 4.0 would be the same in that regard.

[Zoostation1]

@Thomas_ThumbI can't speak for VS 4.0, but I have noticed VS3.0 does not give me an AZ penalty.