What Is the Difference Between Individual and Overall Utilization?

What is the difference between your overall credit utilization ratio and individual utilization ratios and why does it matter to your credit? Keep reading to find out.

Credit utilization makes up 30% of a FICO score.

Credit utilization makes up 30% of a FICO score.

What Is Credit Utilization?

To put it simply, credit utilization is the amount of debt you owe compared to the amount of your available credit. In other words, it is the amount of your available credit that you are actually using.

In terms of your credit score, credit utilization makes up 30% of your score, second only to payment history.

The reason credit utilization is such an important part of your credit score is that the ratio of debt someone has is highly indicative of whether they will default on a debt in the future. The more you owe, the harder it becomes to pay off all that debt on time every month, which makes you a riskier bet for lenders.

Components of Credit Utilization

According to FICO, there are several components that fall within the category of credit utilization, such as:

The total amount you owe on all accounts (overall utilization)

The amount you owe on different types of accounts

The utilization ratios of each of your revolving credit accounts (individual utilization)

The number or ratio of your accounts that have high balances

The amount of debt you still owe on your installment loans (e.g. mortgages, auto loans, student loans)

What Is the Difference Between Overall and Individual Utilization?

Your overall utilization ratio is the amount of revolving debt you have divided by your total available revolving credit.

For example, if you have one credit card with a $450 balance and a $500 limit and a second credit card with a $550 balance and a $3,500 limit, your overall utilization ratio would be 25% ($1,000 owed divided by $4,000 available credit).

However, the individual utilization ratios of your respective credit cards are 90% ($450 balance / $500 credit limit) and 16% ($550 balance / $3,500 credit limit).

Since credit scores consider individual utilization ratios, not just overall utilization, having any single revolving account at 90% utilization is going to weigh negatively on the credit utilization portion of your score.

Overall Utilization May Not Be as Important as You Think

Typically, when people think of the effect that credit utilization has on credit scores, they often assume that overall utilization is the most important variable.

By this assumption, it would be fine to have individual accounts that are maxed out as long as the overall utilization is still low.

Individual utilization ratios may be more important than the overall utilization ratio.

Individual utilization ratios may be more important than the overall utilization ratio.

However, we have seen that this is not always true.

For example, sometimes clients with maxed-out credit cards will buy high-limit tradelines in order to reduce their overall utilization ratio, but then they don’t see the results they were hoping for.

This means that the individual accounts with high utilization are still weighing heavily on the clients’ credit scores, despite the fact that they have improved their overall utilization. In other words, the decrease in the overall utilization ratio did not make much of a difference.

Cases like this seem to indicate that overall utilization may not play as big a role as traditional wisdom has led us to believe and that the individual utilization ratios may be more important.

This is one of the reasons why we typically suggest that consumers focus on the age of a tradeline rather than the credit limit. Although people tend to gravitate toward high-limit tradelines, the age of a tradeline is actually more powerful in most cases, especially considering that lowering one’s overall utilization ratio may not help very much.

How Do Tradelines Affect Credit Utilization?

Although the age of a tradeline is often its most valuable asset, tradelines can still help with some of the credit utilization variables. 

Since our tradelines are guaranteed to have utilization ratios that are at or below 15%, this means that at least 85% of that tradeline’s credit limit is going toward your available credit, which helps to lower your overall utilization ratio. 

Buying tradelines also allows you to add accounts with low individual utilization to your credit file, which can help to improve the number of accounts that are low-utilization vs. high-utilization.

Tips to Keep Your Credit Utilization Low

Spead out your charges between different cards

Since we have seen that it’s important to keep individual utilization ratios low, one strategy to accomplish this is to make charges on a few different credit cards instead of charging everything to one card. Spreading out your charges prevents an excessively high balance from accumulating on any one individual card.

If you spend a lot on one of your cards, consider spreading out your charges between different cards or paying down the balance more often.

If you spend a lot on one of your cards, consider spreading out your charges between different cards or paying down the balance more often.

Pay off your balances more frequently

If you do spend a lot on one card, it helps to pay off your balance more than once a month. If your card reports to the credit bureaus before you have paid off your balance, it will show a higher utilization than if you had paid some or all of the balance down already.

You can either time your payment to post just before the reporting date of your card or you can make payments several times per month. Some people even prefer to pay off each charge immediately so their card never shows a significant balance.

Set up balance alerts to monitor your spending

To prevent mindless spending from getting out of control, try setting up balance alerts on your credit card. Your bank will automatically notify you when the balance exceeds an amount of your choosing, so you can back off of spending on that card or pay down your balance.

Don’t close old accounts

Even if you don’t use some of your old credit cards anymore, it’s often a good idea to keep the accounts open so they can continue to play a positive role in your overall utilization ratio and the number of accounts that have low utilization vs. high utilization.

Ask for credit limit increases

Another way to decrease your utilization ratios is to call your credit card issuers and ask them to increase your credit limit.  By increasing your amount of available credit, you decrease your utilization ratio, both on individual cards and overall.

Individual vs. Overall Utilization - Pinterest

Keep in mind that your bank may do a hard pull on your credit to decide whether or not to grant your request, which could ding your score a few points temporarily. However, the small negative impact of the inquiry could be offset by the benefit of the credit line increase.

Also, this might not be an ideal strategy if you think you will be tempted to use the new credit available to you.

Open a new credit card

Like asking for a higher credit limit, opening a new credit card can also lower your credit utilization, provided you leave most of the credit available.

Again, this will add an inquiry to your credit report, as well as decrease your average age of accounts, so this could have a negative impact on your score temporarily, which may be outweighed by the decrease in your credit utilization.

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Tradelines in 5 Easy Steps

While the credit system is definitely complicated, buying tradelines doesn’t have to be. Just keep a few basic principles in mind and follow these five steps to make buying tradelines easy!

Here are the five easy steps that we’ll break down in this article:

Understand your credit profile
Determine your goals
Choose tradelines that fit your credit profile and align with your goals
Order your tradelines
Wait for your tradelines to post!

Tradelines in 5 Easy Steps Pinterest

1. Understand your credit profile

Understanding your credit file is the foundation of improving your credit. If you don’t know what’s in your file and blindly move ahead with tradelines and/or credit repair, you could easily make a mistake that could hurt your credit more than it helps.

Your credit report shows a list of all of your tradelines, and how you manage these tradelines is reflected in your credit score.

We’ve written about everything you need to know about credit scores previously, but to summarize, these are the main factors that affect your credit score:

Payment history: 35%
Utilization (how much you owe): 30%
Length of credit history: 15%
Credit mix: 10%
New credit: 10%

Before buying any tradelines, you’ll want to take a good look at your credit profile on CreditKarma.com (or order one of your three free credit reports allowed each year from annualcreditreport.com) and make sure everything is accurate and up to date.

Free credit report and credit score from CreditKarma

You can get an overview of your credit profile for free on CreditKarma.com.

If there is inaccurate information in your credit profile, you may want to look into credit repair in addition to tradelines.

Examine each of your credit accounts and try to understand how it may be affecting your credit score, whether positively or negatively.

This foundational step will allow you to form a clear picture of your unique credit situation so you can choose the smartest path to move forward.

2. Determine your goals
The five factors that affect your credit score by Tradeline Supply Company, LLC

Consider these five main factors that affect your credit score when setting your goals.

Now that you are aware of what is in your credit profile, ask yourself what variables could be improved and which strategies would be a good investment of your time, effort, and money.

For example, if you have a blemished payment history that is bringing down your score, you could balance that out by adding as much positive payment history as possible with a seasoned tradeline.

If your credit age is not old enough, you may want to increase the age of your oldest account and your average age of accounts by adding a tradeline with a lot of age.

Perhaps you have a thin file or your credit mix is unbalanced, and you just want to add more tradelines to your credit file.

These are just a few examples of common goals that people often have when they are looking to add tradelines to their credit report. Make sure your goals are personalized to your unique credit situation.

3. Choose tradelines that fit your credit profile and align with your goals

Choosing the correct tradeline tends to be the trickiest part of this process. However, there are really only two main variables that you need to consider when selecting tradelines: the age of the card and the credit limit.

The tricky part is that people often incorrectly assume that they should just get the highest credit limit. In reality, this approach could actually backfire and hurt your credit, because the age of the tradeline is much more important in the vast majority of cases.

However, the credit limit does still come into play if utilization is a factor you are concerned about.

To account for both credit age and utilization, you’ll want to calculate your own average age of accounts and overall utilization ratio using our custom Tradeline Calculator. Simply input the numbers from your credit profile and the calculator will do the work for you.

Use our Tradeline Calculator to calculate your average age of accounts and utilization ratio.

Use our Tradeline Calculator to calculate your average age of accounts and utilization ratio.

Then, try plugging in information from some of the tradelines you are interested in purchasing and see how the numbers change. To get the maximum benefit from tradelines, you want to see the average age of accounts jump up at least to the next age level.

Based on our research, we estimate that the age levels to shoot for are 2 years, 5 years, 8 years, 10 years, and 20 years. So if your average age of accounts is 3 years, for example, it is probably a good idea to buy a tradeline that will boost that average to at least 5 years.

It’s important to fully think through your decision instead of just buying a tradeline that “seems” like a good choice.

For more guidance on choosing the best tradelines for your goals, we strongly encourage you to read “How to Choose a Tradeline” and “Common Mistakes Made When Buying Tradelines.”

4. Order your tradelines
Add tradelines to your cart and checkout on our secure site.

Add tradelines to your cart and checkout on our secure site.

Once you have identified the best tradelines for you, simply add them to your cart and check out on our secure website!

To ensure that all goes smoothly with your purchase and that your tradelines post as guaranteed, you need to make sure you do not have any credit freezes or fraud alerts with any of the credit bureaus.

These actions block access to your credit report, so no new tradelines can be added. If you do have a credit freeze or fraud alert, contact each credit bureau to remove it before purchasing tradelines.

For detailed instructions on how to place a tradeline order, see “How to Purchase Tradelines and What to Expect.”

5. Wait for your tradelines to post!

The last step is the easiest of all: sit back and wait for your tradelines to post! Once you receive your confirmation email, simply wait until the last day of each tradeline’s reporting period and then check to verify that the tradelines have posted.

Then, celebrate your new tradelines on social media! Don’t forget to tag us @tradelinesupply and use #tradelinesupply so we can find your post!

My Tradelines Just Posted! Share this image on social media and tag us when your tradelines post!

Share this image on social media and tag us when your tradelines post!

The banks and credit bureaus sometimes have errors in their reporting, so, unfortunately, there is a small chance that a non-posting could occur. However, if a tradeline does not post to at least any two out of the three credit bureaus, we will provide a refund or exchange for that tradeline. Simply follow the instructions detailed in “Report a Non-Posting” to submit your refund request.

6. Extra credit: Become a tradeline expert using the resources in our Knowledge Center!

The more you learn about tradelines, the more informed you will be when it’s time to buy. Those who are educated on the credit system and how tradelines work are in the best position to maximize their results from tradelines.

Check out our extensive library of tradeline resources in our Knowledge Center to become a tradeline expert and a highly informed buyer.

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How to Choose a Tradeline: A Buyer’s Guide

*Click here to check your utilization ratios and average age of accounts with our custom calculator!*
Understanding How to Choose the Best Tradelines

If you’re just starting out in the world of tradelines, we recommend taking a look at our Tradelines 101 infographic to get the basics down before moving on to deciding which tradelines to purchase. If you’re already familiar with the concept of tradelines and want to learn how to select the best tradelines for sale, then this buyer’s guide is for you.

When shopping to buy tradelines, there are basically only two main variables to consider:

(1) the age of the card, and

(2) the credit limit.

All the other variables should be about equal, which includes having a perfect payment history, low utilization (at or below 15%), the type of account (usually a revolving credit card), and the reporting date.

In most cases, if you buy from a reliable tradeline supplier, the name of the bank should not matter, except in instances where you may be blacklisted from that bank due to filing for bankruptcy or having unpaid collections with that bank.

So, with only two variables to consider, why is it so challenging to be able to choose the right tradelines? The answer is that most people’s credit files are fairly complex due to their depth of credit history. People have numerous data points in their credit file and all that data plays some sort of role in calculating their credit score.

Every person’s credit file is unique, making it very difficult to discuss how tradelines may affect anyone “on average.” Additionally, there are multiple different credit scores, each with their own closely guarded algorithm that takes into account a very large amount of data points within someone’s credit report.

When choosing the best tradelines for your situation, it’s not just about buying the top tradelines in terms of price. To get the results you want, you will need to understand what is already in your credit file and how adding tradelines could affect the important factors in your file.

Adding tradelines to credit file

Most people’s credit files contain a lot of complex information, which can make it difficult to predict how adding tradelines will affect one’s credit.

Credit Limits and Utilization Ratios

Let’s discuss each of these variables individually, starting with credit limits.

In most of the free credit score simulators out there, you can only change a very limited number of variables. So when it comes to trying to guess how a tradeline may affect your credit score, it usually only allows you to enter a new credit limit amount and then it generates a new credit score estimate.

The credit score simulator (sometimes referred to as a credit score calculator) assumes you are opening a new credit card with whatever limit you type in. Essentially, it is only looking at your overall utilization ratio, and not taking into account the age that you would gain from adding a seasoned tradeline.

As far as utilization, many professionals would suggest that you want to stay below 20% ideally. From our experience, we have seen that utilization ratios of 30% – 40% or higher start to pull credit scores down.

The higher the utilization ratio, the more your credit score will decrease, even if these accounts are always paid on time. Most credit specialists would recommend keeping your overall utilization ratio below 20% or even lower.

However, things get much more complicated in instances where someone has several credit cards with different utilization ratios.

Let’s say for example that someone has seven established credit cards, where two have zero balances, two are at 50% utilization, one is at 75%, and the last two are completely maxed out.

Sure, buying some tradelines with high limits might be able to get the overall utilization down to the targeted 20% level, but that does not eliminate the fact that that person still has five credit cards with high utilization, and each of these five cards is pulling down the credit score down due to high individual utilization.

Can a High-Limit Tradeline Help Lower Someone’s Overall Utilization Ratio?

In theory, a higher-limit tradeline can help lower someone’s overall utilization ratio, but this alone may not completely solve the problem of having credit cards with high utilization. Negative factors are always going to play a role in the credit score and having any high-utilization credit cards is a negative factor.

However, having a lower overall utilization ratio would be a positive change and may still yield some benefit despite the fact that the individual credit cards with high utilization will still remain in the equation.

We have even heard of metrics in the secret credit score algorithm that look at the percentage of high-utilization credit cards in someone’s credit file relative to the total number of credit cards they have.

For example, if someone has two credit cards, one with a $5,000 limit where they owe $5,000 on it and another credit card with a $25,000 limit where they owe zero on it, their overall utilization ratio is relatively low at 16.67% but they would be at 50% on the percentage of revolving accounts with high utilization. In this example, the 50% ratio of high utilization cards could possibly have a negative impact even though the overall utilization ratio is within the ideal range.

There may be other reasons why some people are interested in adding higher-limit tradelines to their credit file that have nothing to do with the typical goal of raising their credit score.

For example, some people believe that having higher-limit accounts in their credit file may increase their odds of getting approved for higher-limit credit cards or other types of loans. We do not have any knowledge about the validity of these beliefs, nor do we help people with funding in any way, but we are aware that such strategies exist in the marketplace.

This is an additional reason why some individuals might be interested in a high-limit tradeline even if there is not very much age on the account, which also makes the cost of a tradeline cheaper.

Examining the Age of a Tradeline

Factors that affect your credit score by Tradeline Supply Company, LLC

This leads us to the second variable to discuss, which is the age of the tradeline. We feel that age is the most important of the two factors of a tradeline. In general, a credit score is broken down into the following categories:

35% your payment history
30% how much you owe
15% length of credit history
10% credit mix
10% new credit

The utilization ratios fall under the “how much you owe” category, which accounts for about 30% of your score. Again, if you are only improving the overall utilization ratio but you are still being pulled down by individual card utilization ratios, then you may not be benefitting from the full 30% of the power of this category. Your benefit may be as little as 10-15% if you still have individual cards with high utilization ratios.

However, the tradelines we offer are going to have a perfect payment history, which is the category that can affect your score by as much as 35%. They also have the ability to affect the “length of credit history” category which accounts for another 15% of the score.

When added together, the payment history (35%) plus the length of credit history (15%) amounts to about 50% of a credit score. These two categories, which account for about 50% of a credit score, are both affected by the age of the tradelines.

This is why we believe age is the most important factor of tradelines, making “seasoned” tradelines the most valuable type.

Seasoned tradelines

“Seasoned” tradelines, or those that are at least two years old, are the most valuable type of tradeline.

In the age category, just like the utilization category, there are several different variables. To name a few, the credit score algorithm may look at your average age of accounts, the oldest account in your profile, the number or percentage of non-seasoned accounts (less than 2 years old) in your file as well as the number or percentage of seasoned accounts in your file.

Also, different scoring models may or may not include data on closed accounts and have varying degrees of how much weight they give to closed account information.

To illustrate an example, we have seen a credit report of a person who had over a 700 credit score with no open accounts at all. So 100% of that 700+ credit score was made up of data from closed accounts only.

We also know the opposite can be true, where someone has zero open accounts but several closed accounts with derogatory information and their credit score is very low, all from closed account data. So it is safe to say that closed accounts can still play a significant role in someone’s credit score since it is still part of their credit history.

One of the most important variables related to the length of credit history is the age of the oldest account in someone’s credit profile. This variable is very straightforward, except that it may be split into two categories: open accounts and closed accounts. It is assumed that open accounts usually weigh more than closed accounts and obviously, older accounts are better.

The most common age-related variable that most credit advisors will talk about is the average age of accounts. It is commonly believed that the average age of accounts may be the most powerful factor in the age category.

As we will see in the examples below, in working with tradelines, most people underestimate how difficult it is to significantly affect an average, especially when there are multiple accounts already in your credit history.

Calculating Your Average Age of Accounts

For illustration, here are a few hypothetical examples of how to calculate the average age of accounts and how new tradeline data gets factored in.

Example 1: Thin File for Simple Illustration

Card 1: 0.5 years old
Card 2: 0.5 years old
Card 3: 1.5 years old

The average age of accounts in this example is 0.83 years. The way you figure that out is to add up the total number of years and divide that by the total number of accounts. (0.5 + 0.5 + 1.5 = 2.5 years total, then divide by 3 = 0.83 years average.)

If your goal was to get the average age of accounts up to 2 years old by adding one tradeline, the new tradeline would have to be about 6 years old. (0.5 + 0.5 + 1.5 + 6 = 8.5 total years divided by 4 total accounts = 2.1 average age of accounts.)

Notice how much older the new tradeline had to be in order to simply get the average age of accounts to be 2 years old for a very thin file. Many people would not have guessed that they would need such an old card just to get the average to be 2 years old.

To illustrate this point, if someone were to only add a 4-year-old tradeline to this mix, the average age of accounts would then only be 1.6 years, and this is assuming a person only has 3 revolving accounts (opened or closed) in their credit file, which is very rare.

The more accounts a person has, the less impact a single tradeline will have due to the simple mathematics of calculating an average.

Example 2: Established Credit File With Multiple Open & Closed Accounts

Tradelines affect average age of accounts

The more accounts there are in your credit file, the more difficult it will be to affect the average age of accounts.

Card 1: 4 years old
Card 2: 8 years old
Card 3: 6 years old
Card 4: 4 years old
Card 5: 7 years old
Card 6: 7 years old (closed account)
Card 7: 15 years old (closed account)
Card 8: 13 years old (closed account)
Card 9: 9 years old (closed account)
Card 10: 12 years old (closed account)

The average age of accounts here is 8.5 years old. The way you calculate that is to add up the total number of years and divide that by the total number of accounts. (4 + 8 + 6 + 4 + 7 + 7 + 15 + 13 + 9 + 12 = 85 years, divided by 10 accounts = 8.5 years average age of accounts.)

Let’s say hypothetically that the person’s goal is to get their average age of accounts up to 10 years old by adding a single tradeline.

Please stop and take a moment to guess how many years old a new tradeline would need to be in order to make the average age of accounts 10 years in this example.

The Answer:

They would need to add a tradeline that is 25 years old in order to get the average age of accounts to be 10 years. (4 + 8 + 6 + 4 + 7 + 7 + 15 + 13 + 9 + 12 + 25 = 110 total years divided by 11 total accounts = 10 year average age of accounts.)

Notice how huge of a jump in years is needed in order to change someone’s average if they already have a lot of accounts in their credit file, even if some of them are closed accounts. Most people underestimate how difficult it is to really change an average and even most “professionals” (who are usually just commissioned salespeople) underestimate how these numbers actually work out.

Our tradeline calculator can help you figure out how buying tradelines could affect your credit.

Our tradeline calculator can help you figure out how buying tradelines could affect your credit.

Until you actually do the math yourself, do not just blindly trust what someone suggests for you. To easily calculate your own average age of accounts and utilization ratios and see how those variables change when you add seasoned tradelines, try our Tradeline Calculator.

A Common Mistake People Make When Buying Tradelines

It is easy to see how in the second example above, if this person did not do the math, they might purchase the wrong tradeline and be disappointed.

Let’s say they purchased a tradeline that is 18 years old with a $20,000 credit limit that cost $1,000. They might just assume that since it was an expensive tradeline with a lot of age and a high limit that it should “obviously” be super powerful and they should definitely see positive results.

However, in reality, the 18-year-old card would only increase the average age of accounts to 9.4 years, and it is very possible that increasing one’s average age of accounts from 8.5 years to 9.4 years may not have very much of an impact on their overall credit picture.

As you can imagine, this person could easily be very disappointed in their results for the reason that they simply did not do the math and were not aware of how to choose the best tradeline for their credit file.

As another example, what if this person were to choose to purchase a tradeline that is 7 years old with a $30,000 limit? On the surface, that might look like a decent tradeline to buy, but it would actually decrease their average age of accounts and consequently, it could even hurt their credit score, even though that tradeline might have a $750-$1,000 price tag.

We illustrate this to show that not knowing how tradelines work can actually hurt your credit and be a complete waste of money. For this reason, we believe education is the best service we can offer. Make sure to read our list of common mistakes made when buying tradelines to be aware of other pitfalls to avoid.

Thinking about credit report and buying tradelines

Although credit reports can be complex, it’s important to have a good understanding of your file before choosing which tradelines to buy. Image by Jack Moreh.

Conclusions on Choosing the Best Authorized User Tradelines

Authorized user tradelines can be very effective for many people, assuming that they added superior tradelines to what they already have in their credit file. On the other hand, since many people are not educated about how the system works, it can be easy for people to choose the wrong tradelines that do not help them very much.

Compounding the confusion, it is very difficult to find the best tradeline company to work with. We believe that educating our customers is the best thing that we can do for our community and offering affordable tradelines makes them more accessible to the people who need them most.

Use our Tradeline Calculator to help you understand the key factors relating to the tradelines in your credit file and to help point you in the right direction for your next tradeline. For even more educational resources on tradelines, visit our blog.

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The #1 Secret on How to Unlock the Power of Tradelines

Tradelines are simple. There are only two main variables: Age and limit. Of course, price and posting dates are also important, but let’s set that aside for the moment.

If you want to see good results, you have to focus on age. Age makes up 50% of the credit score because 35% is payment history and 15% is the actual age. However, it is impossible to separate the age from the payment history or the payment history from the age, so in reality, these two categories are combined to form 50% of the credit score.

The other variable of a tradeline is the credit limit. The limit can affect the overall utilization ratio and possibly some other variables in the secret credit score algorithms, but mainly the overall utilization ratio. Since the amounts owed make up approximately 30% of the credit score, people tend to think that the limit of the tradeline is more important, but if you believe this, you are misinformed and you will not get the results you hope for.

Here’s the reason why the limit of a new tradeline does not help as much as people hope: if someone is trying to lower their overall utilization ratio, then that means they currently have high utilization on some of their credit cards.

If someone is carrying a lot of revolving debt, a high-limit tradeline may not provide the results they would hope for.

If someone is carrying a lot of revolving debt, a high-limit tradeline may not provide the results they would hope for.

For example, if someone has several cards that are maxed out, it may seem to make more sense to lower their overall utilization ratio by buying a high limit tradeline as opposed to paying down their cards. However, if they do this, they still have the same amount of cards that are maxed out, and that alone is a very powerful negative factor.

Adding one or two high limit cards does not change the fact that the person still has several maxed out cards, which, as we all know, lowers a credit score. Changing the overall utilization ratio has been shown to be a relatively weak variable when individual high-utilization cards are present. Individual high-utilization cards tend to outweigh the overall utilization ratio.

To illustrate another example, let’s look at it from the opposite perspective of someone starting with a high credit score and a large amount of available credit who sees their score drop after maxing out their cards. (This is a hypothetical example with made-up numbers just to illustrate the point.)

Hypothetical scenario:

780 credit score
10 credit cards with perfect payment history, each with a $10,000 credit limit ($100,000 in available credit)

The number of Individual cards with high utilization tends to outweigh the overall utilization ratio.

The number of individual cards with high utilization tends to outweigh the overall utilization ratio. Photo by Ellen Johnson.

If this person maxes out one card, they only have a 10% overall utilization ratio, but their score might drop to 710.

If this person maxes out a second card, they only have a 20% overall utilization ratio, but their score might drop to 660.

If this person maxes out a third card, they only have a 30% overall utilization ratio, but their score might drop to 640.

Now, if this person were to add a tradeline with a $50,000 limit, the overall utilization ratio may drop back down to 20%, but they may not see any improvement to their score at all, which has to do with the fact that they have three maxed-out credit cards.

The take-home message is this: if someone has high utilization on multiple credit cards, changing the overall utilization ratio alone is not going to solve that problem, and they may not see a significant benefit.

How a Seasoned Tradeline Can Help

The secret to using tradelines effectively is buying “seasoned” tradelines, which are tradelines that have significant age (generally at least two years). We estimate that as much as 90% of the power of a tradeline has to do with its age. However, just looking at the age of an individual tradeline alone is also not the correct way to shop for a tradeline.

The power of a tradeline will always be relative to what is already in someone’s credit report.

Therefore, the most effective way to choose a tradeline is to look at how the new tradeline will affect a person’s average age of accounts.

This is the secret key to unlocking the power of a tradeline. This factor alone is the most significant aspect of how tradelines work.

We have identified several possible age tiers of special significance, especially with respect to one’s average age of accounts. These special age tiers are:

2 Years
5 Years
8 Years
10 Years
20 Years

Therefore, if someone has an average age of accounts of 1.5 years, then the next target would be to pass the 2-year mark with their average age of accounts. Similarly, if someone has an average age of accounts of 3 years, the next target would be to get their average age of accounts past 5 years, and so on.

Often people make the mistake of only looking at the age of a tradeline by itself and not taking into account how the tradeline will affect their average age of accounts.

For example, if someone determines that their average age of accounts is 5 years, they might conclude that any tradeline over 5 years old is what they need, so they might choose a tradeline that is 7 years old.

However, by only adding a 7-year-old tradeline, they would have only increased their average age of accounts from 5 years to 5.2 years, which obviously is not a significant change and certainly does not get their average age of accounts up to the next age tier.

To make this easy, we have created a Tradeline Calculator, which helps you quickly calculate your average age of accounts, and demonstrates how a new tradeline may affect this powerful variable.

Using our Tradeline Calculator to determine your average age of accounts will help guide you in choosing the best tradelines for your particular situation.

Bottom Line:

Age is the most powerful factor of a tradeline and it almost always outweighs the utilization factor.
The best way to choose a tradeline is to figure out how adding a tradeline would affect your average age of accounts.

Additional resources on choosing tradelines effectively:

How to Choose a Tradeline: A Buyer’s Guide
Tradeline Calculator
Common Mistakes Made When Buying Tradelines
Questions Every Authorized User Should Ask When Buying Tradelines

 

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