That’s just 1 credit agency try a different one and they say sonething else
Monzo’s own Credit Insights feature does a pretty good job of this too.
Ideally you want it in single figures, all three CRAs all mention 30% as the main point at which it’ll start to have an impact.
Sure the third-parties that make use of those like Credit Karma will all have their own advice.
Experian
While there’s no specific point when your utilization rate goes from good to bad, 30% is the point at which it starts to have a more pronounced negative effect on your credit score
Equifax
Lenders typically prefer that you use no more than 30% of the total revolving credit available to you.
TransUnion
Popular advice is to keep your credit utilization rate below 30%, but the lower the better. As your credit utilization decreases, it will benefit your score.
The ratio has one of the biggest influences on your report for lenders so worth demonstrating you aren’t being pushed to limits and have plenty of headroom if needed.
This is from the US which use FICO but id imagine similar using ours.
Obviously as a lender you could have in your algorithm that 75+% is an automatic no, or to apply a different rate at certain thresholds. The key thing they want to know is you’re good for the payments each month.
Indeed. What I was trying to say is less cards, less utilisation, when possible.
Funnily enough - the £400 limit is the one card that’s NOT a credit builder one. That’s a Barclaycard and although originally it was one of their credit builder cards (Barclaycard Forward) they allowed me to change it the other year to one of their other cards (Rewards) but haven’t let me increase the limit on it yet. If, at the end of all this, Barclaycard do offer me a ‘proper’ credit limit on that card, the plan is to keep that one, and drop the rest.
I’m just a few percentage points away from being below 70% utilisation - so probably 2 more months of repayments to get below that so hopefully that’ll at least drag me out of the ‘poor’ bracket into something slightly better.
You should check if you can get a 0% balance transfer card. That would speed up your move to a better bracket as I’m sure you’re paying a small fortune on the other cards in interest as I’m guessing they’re charging 30% or more interest.
Yep - also keeping that in mind as well. At the moment - no-one will offer me one, if I get out of the ‘you’ve got to be joking’ credit profile into a ‘maybe we’ll consider it’ one I might get an offer - although I’d suspect I’ll more likely just get offered more ‘standard’ credit builder cards rather than balance transfer ones initially and I’m also keeping in mind the whole ‘if you apply for too many accounts that can also impact your credit profile’ thing.
So, not banking on it (pun unintended!), but would be a nice boost if I can get one.
I was going to say that… a month or two after you drop below 70% you should start to see better offers. Getting individual cards below 70% will help that.
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70% utilisation is too high, you’d need to work it down to 50% and then 30% to see the difference in your credit rating.
I think you could have a look into loan services like Updraft to consolidate all your debts, and then gradually replace multiple low limit cards with fewer but higher limit cards. That should help keep your future credit utilisation on each card low compared to current situation.
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Regarding Flex, Monzo appear to suggest that using 1-75% of the credit limit is good.
Is having 8 open credit cards bad? 
No
Naaah, it’s all about credit utilisation and your ability to pay it back.
Thanks to a quirk of timing my TransUnion score has dropped 7 points because they no longer have a mortgage recorded against me. Basically in midst of remortgaging so one lot have marked it as cleared but the other lot haven’t marked me as on the books.
I know it’s a made up number, but Interesting to see that having the massive debt called a mortgage is a ‘good thing’.
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How important is average account age? Want to close some old dormant credit cards, would it do more harm than good?
What are you thinking might be harmed? Your credit score or your ability to perhaps get a mortgage in the immediate future?
Already have a mortgage.
Kind of just want to clean it up a bit?
Work out your average now, then what it would be if you closed them and compare. If the average is still over, say, 6 it’s probably fine, but if you dropped to, say, 2 perhaps not so OK. I wouldn’t close the oldest one either way.
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Yeah I do as I please and never had any negative effects.
Barely go above 2%. The cards I want to close are pretty low limits so wouldn’t have a massive impact.
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