I was very excited this past year as my scores moved from being in the low 700s to the mid 700s and TU and EQ briefly up to the 800s. I was at 740-760 most of the year.
I was completely shocked when I made some purchases and my utilization went from below 5% to 9%. A couple cards reported 80% for a month.
My scores tanked 40-60 points each. Ex and Eq dropped into the 720's.
I was shocked! I had built up credit lines of about 30 cards and just over 300k available credit. A handful of cards are 30-50k each.
They did pop back up this month into the 800's with my payments reporting. Yet, I was just really surprised at the huge score drop.
I didn't believe it would be that large of an effect while still under 10% utilization.
Yep over 50% on one card will get you a nice ding, 80%+ even more of a ding. Start compounding that across additional cards scores will continue to drop like a rock.... glad you shared the experience, and great that they bounced right back up for you.
@fm92555 wrote:I was very excited this past year as my scores moved from being in the low 700s to the mid 700s and TU and EQ briefly up to the 800s. I was at 740-760 most of the year.
I was completely shocked when I made some purchases and my utilization went from below 5% to 9%. A couple cards reported 80% for a month.
My scores tanked 40-60 points each. Ex and Eq dropped into the 720's.
I was shocked! I had built up credit lines of about 30 cards and just over 300k available credit. A handful of cards are 30-50k each.
They did pop back up this month into the 800's with my payments reporting. Yet, I was just really surprised at the huge score drop.
I didn't believe it would be that large of an effect while still under 10% utilization.
The large score drop wasn't caused by going from 5% to 9% on aggregate utilization, but by the 80% individual accounts.
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@fm92555 wrote:I was very excited this past year as my scores moved from being in the low 700s to the mid 700s and TU and EQ briefly up to the 800s. I was at 740-760 most of the year.
I was completely shocked when I made some purchases and my utilization went from below 5% to 9%. A couple cards reported 80% for a month.
My scores tanked 40-60 points each. Ex and Eq dropped into the 720's.
I was shocked! I had built up credit lines of about 30 cards and just over 300k available credit. A handful of cards are 30-50k each.
They did pop back up this month into the 800's with my payments reporting. Yet, I was just really surprised at the huge score drop.
I didn't believe it would be that large of an effect while still under 10% utilization.
The large score drop wasn't caused by going from 5% to 9% on aggregate utilization, but by the 80% individual accounts.
This is very good to realize. I didn't remember such a drop in the past when my scores were lower and I used a couple cards to high utilization. I can remember charging up a couple cards with 690-710 scores and not seeing a 40-60 point drop.
Now I really recognize to keep utilization spread out among my accounts.
I guess this is where it really hurts using one card that has a 0% balance transfer opportunity. You have to consider that it will really hit your scores if you max out that transfer credit line.
I removed myself as an AU on a 36% reported card bringing my aggregate utilization to 7% and for some reason my EX dropped 26 points lol that account was only maybe 3 years old so I didnt think it would be that damaging to my AAoA. So, I feel you lol
