After reading messages on this board, it is clear that TU weighs (most?) heavily the proportion of open TL with a balance. EQ weighs (most?) heavily the utilization (total and individual). So, I could nock down utilization on all my revolving TL to <30% to make EQ happy, or I could pay off a couple cards and get all but one below 30% to make TU happy (and hope one more heavily used card doesn't hurt me too much).
Paying off cards will have me one TL shy of that magic proportion of less than half revolving, half all TL that TU seems to favor. My question is this: is that an all or nothing consideration? Will having more TL reporting $0 balance be helpful, even if I can't yet hit the magic number? (The problem is that my student loan reports as several installment accounts, which gobbles up the number of TL in the formula.)
If TU looks at this as an all or nothing kind of thing, then I'd be better off getting all open cards to 30%.
Any thoughts?
(FYI - myFICO TU is 732; EQ is 733; no negatives reported; AAoA 9 yrs; total age 15 yrs)
