strive4credit Posted January 18, 2012 Report Share Posted January 18, 2012 Does the utilization model matter when it comes to closed accounts?I have other credit cards but the three I closed have balances between 30 - 50% of the limits. Will paying them down raise my score? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denita Posted January 19, 2012 Report Share Posted January 19, 2012 Yes, FICO counts the balance above zero agaist your overall available credit when scoring. In other words, your utilization is negatively impacted when you have closed accounts with balances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willingtocope Posted January 19, 2012 Report Share Posted January 19, 2012 But...the utilization factor has the biggest effect on your FICO Consumer Bank Card score. A high Bank Card score gets you more credit cards...not really a good thing. Your FICO mortgage score, new car score, etc...doesn't like to see a large amount of available credit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strive4credit Posted January 19, 2012 Author Report Share Posted January 19, 2012 But does the utilization factor count for each individual account....or the overall cards, limits and balances. For instance, lets say a person has 3 credit accounts with $1000 limits on each.Now let's say one card has a balance of $600 and the others have zero balances. Does this scenario still have an adverse effect on the FICO score? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrumpyGus Posted January 19, 2012 Report Share Posted January 19, 2012 Your FICO score is a summarization. In the example you gave you would have $600/$3000. Though you would be $600/$1000, $0/$1000, $0/$1000 and a lender who pulls your credit report could see that...however most of the time it is a simple computer program which denies or approves your application based upon that summary value when compared to their business model.To shorten...even though your utilization of one card is over 50% the FICO score judges your overall utilization which is 20%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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