Lowering UTI: How much of an impact?

[takeshi74]

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@beezer32 wrote:
Generally speaking, if someone has a an overall utilization percentage across all cards of 30-50%, wouldn't lowering the utilization rate across all of those cards to 9% or less significantly improve a credit score?

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Yes, generally speaking, the bigger score impacts come from bigger changes in revolving utilization.

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@beezer32 wrote:
If a FICO score is 35% based on utilization, the score should heavily fluctuate with utilization changes right?

Amount Owed is 35%.  Don't conflate Amounts Owed with Revolving Utilization.  The latter has a significant impact but it is not the only thing that counts toward Amounts Owed.  Changes in revolving utilization can certainly lead to variations in score as balances report and change.

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@lrodrig wrote:

Just to offer another data point. My score went up by 30 - 40 points last week after my utilization went down to around 25% from 50% (we had a bunch of medical bills and work travel reimbursement). Experian went up a whopping 43 points. Yesterday myFICO reports another balance decrease and Experian went *down* 9 points. Equifax went up as a result of the same decrease alert today by 10 points.

I just don't understand.

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If you rely on myFICO alerts and updates you will probably have trouble understanding.  myFICO is a trigger based service.

http://myfico.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/463/~/understanding-what-triggers-fico%C2%AE-3-bu...

Not all activity with a scoring impact is a trigger.  The reason cited is the reason for the update -- not necessarily the reasons for the scoring change.  If you want to determine the reason(s) for any scoring change you need to refer to reports from before and after the scoring change and carefully compare to determine all changes.

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@Anonymous wrote:

A little over a month ago I dropped my overall utilization from 44% to 8% and AT BEST I saw 2-3 points gained on all of my FICO 08's.  That 8% was with all accounts under 10% BTW; there were no high ones factored in at all.

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Could be a matter of bucketing.  Not as common a topic here as it seems to be on CB for some reason.

[beezer32]

You folks are all masters of credit to me! Thanks a bunch for all of the wonderful input. I love these forums!!

[RonM21]

Utilization is one of the key factors in the scoring, but I also think it can be one of the biggest movers in your score, depending on how quick and significant the util % changes.

[BooBee]

Two months ago I had 15% utilization total between two cards.  I paid both cards down to zero in one month ($8,000 approx) and my score jumped 15-23 points on all my credit reports.  I know this because I use the Ultimate 3B service and got the alerts when each credit score started jumping up as a result of the 18-0% utilization.