It's not just about highest utilization account

[SouthJamaica]

An interesting little data point. I had 2 accounts over 30%, one at 59%, the other at 32%.

The 32% account just reported at zero. EX FICO 8 jumped 5 points.

So it's not just about your highest utilization account. Another over-30% account can pull you down too.

[Anonymous]

While this is completely possible, there's also the other factor at play here that we've been discussing in other threads, which is related to "number" of accounts with balances, not just percentages.  To test this, I'd suggest taking that now $0 balance account and allowing it to report a small balance, say $10 and see if anything changes.  This way you go back to having the same number of accounts with reported balances that you had prior to the 5 point jump, but you remove the > 30% individual account utilization variable from the equation.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

While this is completely possible, there's also the other factor at play here that we've been discussing in other threads, which is related to "number" of accounts with balances, not just percentages.  To test this, I'd suggest taking that now $0 balance account and allowing it to report a small balance, say $10 and see if anything changes.  This way you go back to having the same number of accounts with reported balances that you had prior to the 5 point jump, but you remove the > 30% individual account utilization variable from the equation.

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1. Sorry, I can't do that kind of micromanagement.

2. The number of accounts usually bounces around from 5 to 10 and I never notice a score difference related to that.

[Anonymous]

1.  No big deal, but it sounds like you'll never know the exact reason, then. 

2.  If you have 5-10 accounts bouncing around in terms of number with a reported balance at any given time, that just enters even more variables into the equation.  This makes it a near impossibility to pinpoint the exact cause of a 5 point change IMO.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

1.  No big deal, but it sounds like you'll never know the exact reason, then. 

2.  If you have 5-10 accounts bouncing around in terms of number with a reported balance at any given time, that just enters even more variables into the equation.  This makes it a near impossibility to pinpoint the exact cause of a 5 point change IMO.

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1. The number of accounts with balances dropped from 6 to 5. As mentioned, the number of accounts with balances never seems to affect my scores.

2.  The overall revolving utilization percentage dropped from 7.2%   to 5.2%. As previously mentioned, overall revolving utilization percentage does sometimes affect my scores, so I can't rule that one out.

3.  Unfortunately I can't do the type of laboratory-style micromanaging you suggest, because my profile has too much going on. This was a rare instance where a single event clearly caused a 5-point pop in the EX FICO 8, so I thought it worth posting for that reason.  But yes of course you are right that I cannot pinpoint which points were attributable to which aspect of the event. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Definitely nothing to be sorry about buddy.  As with all of these FICO scoring discussions, we always have to be very skeptical and thoroughly research any potential new data points.  I appreciate you bringing something new to the table, no doubt.  It is important though to determine if something is a definitely lock in terms of a reason why something happened, or if there are other variables at play.  Sometimes it takes a couple of times to test something back and forth to be 100% certain, but as you suggest that can involve a certain degree of micromanaging that some simply aren't willing to deal with.  And, I totally get that.