Personal blog on early retirement, tradelines, and analytics projects. I write about what I learn as I am learning it.
Most people frame this as a dollar-amount question — I owe three thousand, or eight thousand, or fifteen thousand — and want to know if that number is the problem. From a credit score standpoint, the raw dollar amount is almost irrelevant. What matters is the ratio: how much of your available credit you’re using. That ratio is utilization, and it’s the real answer to how much credit card debt is too much. Related: do installment loans help your credit — worth reading if this applies to you.
Buyers often ask me which tradeline will help them the most. Before I answer, I usually ask one question back: what does your revolving utilization look like? If it’s high, a tradeline with a big limit can move your score faster than almost anything else. If it’s already low, the math works differently and we should be looking at age instead. Understanding revolving utilization is where that conversation always starts, because it’s the single fastest-moving part of your credit score.
Continue reading “Revolving Utilization: What It Is and How to Fix It”