Testing Credit Card Utilization Thresholds

[KatSoDak]

Very informative!

I read through the thread but could not find if you mentioned if you have a mixture of credit. Do you have outstanding loans in addition the the 13 credit cards (3 with balances)?

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@mowglidude wrote:

In the last few months, I experinced several score changes. On 12/18, I still had one card at 30% utilization and overall utilization was 9.53%. My EX 8 Fico was 797 at the time. After bringing that one card down under 30% the following month, my score shot up to 798 lol. Overall util was 9.17% on Jan 15. On Jan 19, my score went up 16 points, to 814. My overall UT was paid down to 8.37%. And just recently on Feb 9, my overall UT went under the 6% threshold I wanted to acheive, to 5.50%. Here are my three scores now. I have 13 credit cards and 6 are at 0 balance and the three are over 10% UT, at 12, 13 and 15% individually. The rest are under 1% individual UT. I hope this helps.

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[mowglidude]

Yes, I have a personal loan still at 69% UT and a car lease at 34% UT.

[mowglidude]

Today, my account posted a 4.59% total UT, I paid down card to see what would happen, if I went under the 5% threshold. There was no change in my score. Still at 821 EX FICO 8.

[Anonymous]

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@mowglidude wrote:

Today, my account posted a 4.59% total UT, I paid down card to see what would happen, if I went under the 5% threshold. There was no change in my score. Still at 821 EX FICO 8.

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@mowglidude I do not believe there is a 6% threshold. And you did not go under the 5% threshold because standard rounding is used, making that 5%. 

however I'm glad to see that you are seeing the point changes at the other thresholds as you're supposed to, that's great congratulations!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@mowglidude wrote:

Today, my account posted a 4.59% total UT, I paid down card to see what would happen, if I went under the 5% threshold. There was no change in my score. Still at 821 EX FICO 8.

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@mowglidude I do not believe there is a 6% threshold. And you did not go under the 5% threshold because standard rounding is used, making that 5%. 

I think there may be a blend of percentage/amount going on, even when we only see one or the other reason statements.

This is from my recent post about AoYA/AoYRA 1yr 0mo:

"TU 4: My score went down -4 points, and the reason "Amount owed on revolving accounts is too high" jumped from #4 to #2.

5% to 6% aggregate with a $236 increase in aggregate balance from $1,571 to $1,807!"

"Proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too high", Code 10 on TU4, isn't even making the top 4.

Edit To Add: EX8 -6 points from 747 to 741 with a 2% to 5% change in January. From $658 to $1,571 aggregate balance. I'm only getting 2 reason statements from Experian on EX8: Short account history and no loan activity.

[Curious_George2]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@mowglidude wrote:

Today, my account posted a 4.59% total UT, I paid down card to see what would happen, if I went under the 5% threshold. There was no change in my score. Still at 821 EX FICO 8.

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@mowglidude I do not believe there is a 6% threshold. And you did not go under the 5% threshold because standard rounding is used, making that 5%. 

I think there may be a blend of percentage/amount going on, even when we only see one or the other reason statements.

This is from my recent post about AoYA/AoYRA 1yr 0mo:

"TU 4: My score went down -4 points, and the reason "Amount owed on revolving accounts is too high" jumped from #4 to #2.

5% to 6% aggregate with a $236 increase in aggregate balance from $1,571 to $1,807!"

"Proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too high", Code 10 on TU4, isn't even making the top 4.

Edit To Add: EX8 -6 points from 747 to 741 with a 2% to 5% change in January. From $658 to $1,571 aggregate balance. I'm only getting 2 reason statements from Experian on EX8: Short account history and no loan activity.

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I too see a threshold on EX8 when crossing under 5%. It's 4 points for me, but with about 10x your total balance. That difference in size of effect fits with the threory that amount and util interact. 

Re number of reasons: Seems like maybe there's a threshold for displaying them. Not showing reasons with an effect smaller than X points would make some sense and be consistent with the logic behind suppressing all reasons on high scores.

[Anonymous]

Yes no doubt there are balance thresholds. And I believe the code is thrown whenever you hit the lowest threshold. But it still has to make the top 4.

For some reason my notifications haven’t been working since early this morning so I just happened across this thread.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@mowglidude wrote:

Today, my account posted a 4.59% total UT, I paid down card to see what would happen, if I went under the 5% threshold. There was no change in my score. Still at 821 EX FICO 8.

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@mowglidude I do not believe there is a 6% threshold. And you did not go under the 5% threshold because standard rounding is used, making that 5%. 

I think there may be a blend of percentage/amount going on, even when we only see one or the other reason statements.

This is from my recent post about AoYA/AoYRA 1yr 0mo:

"TU 4: My score went down -4 points, and the reason "Amount owed on revolving accounts is too high" jumped from #4 to #2.

5% to 6% aggregate with a $236 increase in aggregate balance from $1,571 to $1,807!"

"Proportion of balances to credit limits on bank/national revolving or other revolving accounts is too high", Code 10 on TU4, isn't even making the top 4.

Edit To Add: EX8 -6 points from 747 to 741 with a 2% to 5% change in January. From $658 to $1,571 aggregate balance. I'm only getting 2 reason statements from Experian on EX8: Short account history and no loan activity.

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@Anonymous two things. Number one the metrics are weighted differently, so we cannot assume that one will be thrown as easily as another. Number two Version 8 reason codes suck unfortunately as Rev always says. 

looks like a balance threshold on TU4 to me. 

On EX8, imho, The 5% threshold caused it, but is not triggering the code, either because the codes suck or because it requires a higher threshold on that version to throw the code, even though it may penalize at a lower threshold. Maybe 8/9 begin to penalize at aThreshold before the code is thrown? Or as @Curious_George2 proposed, maybe they're not shown unless they reach a certain point magnitude in 8/9?

[Anonymous]

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@Curious_George2 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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Edit To Add: EX8 -6 points from 747 to 741 with a 2% to 5% change in January. From $658 to $1,571 aggregate balance. I'm only getting 2 reason statements from Experian on EX8: Short account history and no loan activity.

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I too see a threshold on EX8 when crossing under 5%. It's 4 points for me, but with about 10x your total balance. That difference in size of effect fits with the threory that amount and util interact. 

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@Curious_George2: I started a topic about that EX 5% threshold here. I called it a 4% threshold there because that was before we found out from people at FICO that utilization doesn't always round up (ceiling).

It was ±3 points before AoOA 3yr0m, and ±4 points after, which is what you are seeing now as well. EQ8 matched the EX change, and TU8 only changed by a single point.

I went over/under 5% aggregate quite a few times and was able to see EX8 losing/gaining every single time.

[mowglidude]

Great stuff!! I will be paying off another card, which posts March 3rd. With everything else the same, my aggregate UT will be at 3.05%, so hopefully that will show at 3% threshold. Let's see what happens then.