Sorta advanced fico util question, please help

[Anonymous]

Hello Guys,

My story goes as this. In October I pulled all three of my reports for the first time (at 36 Years old) Over the three Bureaus I had 24 negative items spread over the three. I studied this and credit boards, and had them all removed by January. I have had a wells fargo secured card gardening for about 8 years, that got up to 6200 limit unsecured without asking CLI. 

My question is this. I currently have CSP 5K, AMEX 7.5K, AMEX-E 9.5K, Discover 2k, Barclay Apple 5K, WF 6.2K, Paypal 7K 

A total of arount 42K

I am looking to app my first auto loan with wells fargo. I paid everything down to zero, Wells fargo will not do a mid cycle report and is still two weeks away. Balance was 2K.

My scores are around 730-740 right now.  

I recently bought a new imac on the barclay for about 2900.

Fico dropped 22 points when it reported. 

My question is when I have 7  cards at zero and 1 card is supposed to be at 1-9%. This card is currently at 60 or so percent. 

I really don't have much money left (I am trying to hold on to a 25% deposit on a 30K car) to pay it down. 

Is there a magic number that I can get the single reporting card down too to help with scoring. Perhaps under 50% or 30% that would make it worth it for me cash/ fico wise.

Thanks for the help!

[vanillabean]

Welcome to myFICO.

Are you saying that both the Wells Fargo card and the Barclays card are reporting balances at this time and all other cards are listed on your credit reports as zero?

No, there is no such thing as a magic number, but 60% is much too high on a card!

[Anonymous]

Thank you for answering!!

I paid off the last 2K I owed on Wells Fargo last week. It does not report until mid month (April) . And will show up on myFico 3b monitoring when it feels like it. I also have USAA daily pull. There seems to be no real rhmye or reason when Myfico updates. But USAA has been spot on for me. I guess its when myfico feel like doing a soft pull.

Anyways, yes Barclays is reporting 2800. Over 50%  The only card reporting a balance out of 7. 

Would it be cost effective for me to pay it under 50% or 30% score wise? I could do it if I had too, If I could get 8 or so points out of it. 

I have been chasing my CSP bonus, and I have been paying a lot lately to all the cards down except paypal SC. (which is a complete joke to me)

I am not even sure if any of this will make a difference with an auto loan. Once I started to learn about Credit, I have become totally obsessed with learning and making everything tidy.

Thanks again!

[KellyP25721]

The high utilization on the Barclay card isn't good, but you might want to wait until the Wells Fargo card reports the new 0 balance and see what your score does.  In my experience, you will get some of that score back when only 1 card is reporting a balance.