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Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

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happy0510
Established Contributor

Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

I am looking to see what the variances in point increases are. I am in desperate need of a major jump (on the mortgage scoring models) to reach the middle score mark. I am at 50% Util and will be dropping it down to the 1%ish mark soon.

 

Please share your point changes!


Starting Score: 615
Current Score: 709
Goal Score: 750


Take the FICO Fitness Challenge
Message 1 of 9
8 REPLIES 8
TRC_WA
Senior Contributor

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Varies based on profile.

 

Back when I had $5k in cards... a $4500 purchase would drop my FICO 30 points or more.

 

Now... 1-2 points.

 

What I see isn't what you'll see and isn't what the next poster will see... just sayin'.

 

 

FICO8 current as of : 4-6-25 EQ: 736 TU: 728 EX: 722
Hard INQs last 12 months: EQ: 0 | TU: 0 | EX: 0
Verizon Visa $8500 Amex Delta Reserve $10,000 Care Credit $18,000
NFCU CashRewards $7500 Apple Card $7000 Best Buy $8000 Amazon $5000
NFCU auto loan (2022 Ford Bronco Sport Badlands - Cactus Gray) 6.95%
NFCU motorcycle loan (2024 Harley Davidson Road Glide - Alpine Green & Chrome) 9.45%
Total CL: $64,000 --- Total CC UTI: 31% --- AAoA: 6.5 years --- Income: $200k
Last app: 4-6-24
Message 2 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%


@happy0510 wrote:

I am looking to see what the variances in point increases are. I am in desperate need of a major jump (on the mortgage scoring models) to reach the middle score mark. I am at 50% Util and will be dropping it down to the 1%ish mark soon.

 

Please share your point changes!


As TRC pointed out, everyones file is different. You could see just a handfull of points, or you could see 20-30 points. What is your overall profile look like?

Message 3 of 9
happy0510
Established Contributor

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%


@Anonymous wrote:

@happy0510 wrote:

I am looking to see what the variances in point increases are. I am in desperate need of a major jump (on the mortgage scoring models) to reach the middle score mark. I am at 50% Util and will be dropping it down to the 1%ish mark soon.

 

Please share your point changes!


As TRC pointed out, everyones file is different. You could see just a handfull of points, or you could see 20-30 points. What is your overall profile look like?


AAOA 5 years. 1 baddie( Paid for less than on an Amex in March 2014. )
I have a mix with mortgage, car, store cards & credit cards.

 


Starting Score: 615
Current Score: 709
Goal Score: 750


Take the FICO Fitness Challenge
Message 4 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Anytime my credit UTI drops from 30% down to under 15% I usually see about 20 point jump in my credit reports. 

Message 5 of 9
Thomas_Thumb
Senior Contributor

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%


@happy0510 wrote:

I am looking to see what the variances in point increases are. I am in desperate need of a major jump (on the mortgage scoring models) to reach the middle score mark. I am at 50% Util and will be dropping it down to the 1% ish mark soon.

 

Please share your point changes!


I had no point change going from 1% UT to 6% UT and back to 1% UT.

 

You could see a 30 point increase going from over 50% to under 10%. Likely very little change going from 9% to 1% (if same # cards reporting abalance).

 

Keep % of cards reporting a non zero balance to under 50% - just one card reporting a balance might be ideal even if it is 20% to 30% - as long as overall UT remains undeer 10%.

Fico 9: .......EQ 850 TU 850 EX 850
Fico 8: .......EQ 850 TU 850 EX 850
Fico 4 .....:. EQ 809 TU 823 EX 830 EX Fico 98: 842
Fico 8 BC:. EQ 892 TU 900 EX 900
Fico 8 AU:. EQ 887 TU 897 EX 899
Fico 4 BC:. EQ 826 TU 858, EX Fico 98 BC: 870
Fico 4 AU:. EQ 831 TU 872, EX Fico 98 AU: 861
VS 3.0:...... EQ 835 TU 835 EX 835
CBIS: ........EQ LN Auto 940 EQ LN Home 870 TU Auto 902 TU Home 950
Message 6 of 9
ddemari
Super Contributor

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Recently I paid off a bunch of cc bills. My utilization went from 12% down to 7% so far, once the last batch of cards report in early september I will be down to 3% utilization across the CRA's.

 

So far my score has not been bumped up. I even had a few cards that had 30 to 45 percent utilization reporting, now report as 0 and no bump still. 

Message 7 of 9
Thomas_Thumb
Senior Contributor

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%


@ddemari wrote:

Recently I paid off a bunch of cc bills. My utilization went from 12% down to 7% so far, once the last batch of cards report in early september I will be down to 3% utilization across the CRA's.

 

So far my score has not been bumped up. I even had a few cards that had 30 to 45 percent utilization reporting, now report as 0 and no bump still. 


ddemari, Thanks for the info. 

 

Can you provide additional details on change in # or % of cards reporting a non zero balance. We are always trying to fill in some gaps on what thresholds exist for various factors - also thresholds appear to be profile dependent. Do you have any Derogs in your file.

 

Given the large # of cards in your Sig, % cards reporting may be a better metric than # reporting. BTW - how may cards do you have?

 

1) Evidence is pretty strong that score is negatively impacted if 0% or 100% of cards report a non zero balance. I have reported balances on 2 of 6 cards up to 5 of 6 cards with no Fico 8 score change - have not tested 6 of 6 myself. Another clean profile saw no change reporting balances on 1 of 5 up through 4 of 5 but saw a drop at 5 of 5 cards reporting. A profile with some Derog(s) reported seeing a repeatable score drop at 3 of 9 cards reporting but no score difference between 1 of 9 and 2 of 9.

 

2) On an individual card basis I have not experienced any Fico 8 score change when cards reported high UT% so I would not expect 30% or 45% to impact your score.

 

3) I am surprised that dropping aggregate UT% from 12% to 7% had no score impact. Sometimes changes take awhile to update. Please share more data on this in September.

Fico 9: .......EQ 850 TU 850 EX 850
Fico 8: .......EQ 850 TU 850 EX 850
Fico 4 .....:. EQ 809 TU 823 EX 830 EX Fico 98: 842
Fico 8 BC:. EQ 892 TU 900 EX 900
Fico 8 AU:. EQ 887 TU 897 EX 899
Fico 4 BC:. EQ 826 TU 858, EX Fico 98 BC: 870
Fico 4 AU:. EQ 831 TU 872, EX Fico 98 AU: 861
VS 3.0:...... EQ 835 TU 835 EX 835
CBIS: ........EQ LN Auto 940 EQ LN Home 870 TU Auto 902 TU Home 950
Message 8 of 9
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: Share your score increase after dropping Utilization to 1-10%

Taking the most basic of advice here, this is what happened to my "mortgage scores" in the first month reading here, by moving my reported utilization to a single card and getting it down below 10% (it was less than 20% total previously spread across all my 3 cards).  No other changes! Full disclosure: 2 mortage lines open, 1 car loan, 3 credit cards, 3 public records, no other baddies.

 

I was pulling Experian for testing as I had other weird things going on with EQ at the time and TU mortgage wasn't provided back then.

 

 

Message 9 of 9
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