New balances on two of my cards reported a couple of days ago, increasing the utilization on those cards from just under 50% to 68%, and from 34% to 52% respectively and overall utilization from 7% to 9%. The result was a 15 points drop in my ScoreWatch FICO score (can never remember which scoring model is used here). None of my other cards is reporting a balance.
I'm going to bet that the impact of 7% to 9% overall utilization is minimal, so it must be the individual balances crossing certain thresholds that caused the significant score drop. Since both cards crossed 50%, I think this is likely a threshold. Anyone else had a similar experience with a 50% threshold?
@lhcole77 wrote:
I have had the same experience in the past. And from my experience it seems that Experian is especially sensitive to crossing the threshold.
The credit monitoring service I subscribe to through Wells Fargo has a really good calculator built into it. It allows you to run what if scenarios. Every time I do this I noticed that when I crossed the 50% threshold scores dropped.
The Wells Fargo calculator is an interesting observation. Next month I shall bring the utilization on one of my cards down to below 50% and see what impact that will have on my score! 
@lhcole77 wrote:
Good thinking. Do you subscribe to a service as well?
I have Score Watch. The new balance decrease alert feature is going to help 
DaBears: Beacon 5.0 it is. Thanks for the info!