Will I have a jump in score?

[crosbyk1]

I was just wondering if i will have a decent score jump. My CapOne card was rate jacked from 7-18%. so i decided to pay it in full. The card was reporting 1995 and the limit was 2050. Will my score go up paying off this max out card?  

[Anonymous]

Sort of depends on your overall utilization.., if this was your only credit card then yeah you'll get a good bump. If you have another card with a 20k limit and 0 balance then this won't have a very big impact at all.

[JoeBJay20]

I agree with the previous poster but let me add that FICO scoring takes into account both individual and overall CC utilization.  So at the very least you should see a modest score increase for reducing utilization on a nearly maxed out card.  Whether or not you get the bigger score boost from reducing overall utilization depends on how much paying that card reduced your total utilization.

[Anonymous]

crosby, some CCCs are issuing a CLD after partial payment or even complete PIF!  Even though you reduce your debt, your CL may not remain at the level it was.  Obviously, this affects your utilization, as it goes down less than if the CL had remained where it was prior to the PIF.

[Anonymous]

JoeBJay20,

That's interesting to me.  I watch my credit balances and their effect on scores; and wondered if this was the case.  At one point, my DH had 2 cards, a $500 Orchard and a $10,000 Alliant.  When the Orchard balance went from 0 to $138 ( think that's about 21% on the account but 7% overall), he took a 16 point hit.  Later, with a 3rd card reporting, when the Alliant went from 0 to $750 (about 7% on the account but about 5% overall), he gained 11 points. 

And, of course, when he went from $800 to $2400 on Alliant (that's 32% on the card, 22% overall) he got an 18 point beating.  Thanks for fine-tuning my understanding of balances.  I know overall utilization is best at < 9%, and even better as you get down to 1%.  I'm guessing that the individual credit balances are also best at 9% or below??  So when DH lets his ONE CC report (he now has seven cards rather than two), we'll be sure to keep that card below 9%.

[JoeBJay20]

Correct, you want individual and total balances at 9% or less, and preferably you want most cards to report a $0 balance and a card or two to report a small balance.  What the optimal small balance is varies from report to report, but it's generally 1-3%. 

[RobertEG]

Fair Isaac has repeatedly reported that overall % util and indiv. card utilizations count about equally in their scoring algorithm. 

So paying down a maxed, or close to maxed, CC is a signicant step in improving FICO score.

I would expect a jump of at least 20 pts.