order of importance to maintain or increase score.

[Earthstarr7]

Someone help me. I am trying to understand the scoring for FICO scores. I understand that:

35% is Payment History

30% is Amounts Owed

15% is Length of Credit History

10% is New Credit

10% is Mix of Credit

So my question is: What has a greater weight, amount owed or to be under 50% on all your credit cards. I'll explain my situation. In all i have under 33% untilization currently as it relates to my overall credit. There are 3 cards that I am over 50% utilization. these cards are 0% interest rate right now. So I am trying to juggle paying my higher interest rate cards currently with managing my credit score utilization. Any suggestions? I wan to reduce my debt while paying the least amount of interest but I don't want to hurt my score either. what do I do?

[SouthJamaica]

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@Earthstarr7 wrote:

Someone help me. I am trying to understand the scoring for FICO scores. I understand that:

35% is Payment History

30% is Amounts Owed

15% is Length of Credit History

10% is New Credit

10% is Mix of Credit

So my question is: What has a greater weight, amount owed or to be under 50% on all your credit cards. I'll explain my situation. In all i have under 33% untilization currently as it relates to my overall credit. There are 3 cards that I am over 50% utilization. these cards are 0% interest rate right now. So I am trying to juggle paying my higher interest rate cards currently with managing my credit score utilization. Any suggestions? I wan to reduce my debt while paying the least amount of interest but I don't want to hurt my score either. what do I do?

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1. You have to establish your priorities: (a) saving interest or (b) increasing your scores.  But as to juggling both priorities:

2. 50% is an individual account utilization threshold, so if you get those 3 accounts down to 48% you should get a score boost.

3.  30% is another individual account utilization threshold, so the more accounts under 30%, the better.

4.  33% aggregate utilization is costing you points, so of course you should try to reduce the aggregate utilization too.

[sarge12]

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@Earthstarr7 wrote:

Someone help me. I am trying to understand the scoring for FICO scores. I understand that:

35% is Payment History

30% is Amounts Owed

15% is Length of Credit History

10% is New Credit

10% is Mix of Credit

So my question is: What has a greater weight, amount owed or to be under 50% on all your credit cards. I'll explain my situation. In all i have under 33% untilization currently as it relates to my overall credit. There are 3 cards that I am over 50% utilization. these cards are 0% interest rate right now. So I am trying to juggle paying my higher interest rate cards currently with managing my credit score utilization. Any suggestions? I wan to reduce my debt while paying the least amount of interest but I don't want to hurt my score either. what do I do?

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It is important to note that, at least for scoring models prior to fico 10, utilization carries no history. If your utilization is bad for 5 years and becomes ideal later, your score will be the same as someone who always had ideal utilization. Beginning with fico 10, especially fico 10T, that changes, and trended data will affect the new scores. How much of an effect it will have is yet unknown. Payment history, and amount of debt should always be the main focus. In the future, avoiding any revolving interest by always paying all cards in full is the best, if possible. A traditional installment loan will usually carry lower interest than credit cards, and will be better for credit scores as well.

[NRB525]

If you are not applying for any credit, then no one cares what your score is. 

If you have balances on 0% accounts already, then that is helping you both save interest cash cost, and thus pay down all balances faster. Don't move balances off 0% accounts unless you have a significant app like a mortgage coming up.